Does Your Brewery Need a Rebrand? 7 Signs It’s Time
A brewery probably needs a rebrand when its identity no longer reflects the business, struggles to stand out, confuses drinkers or starts getting in the way of growth. That doesn’t automatically mean throwing away everything you’ve built. Sometimes the right answer is a complete rebrand, but sometimes a sharper strategy, clearer messaging or better packaging will solve the problem.
The tricky bit is knowing when your brewery has simply got a few things to tidy up and when the brand itself has genuinely reached the end of the road.
So, before you start redesigning logos or changing can artwork, here are seven signs that your brewery brand might be telling you it’s time for a rethink.
7 SIGNS YOUR BREWERY MIGHT NEED A REBRAND
1. YOUR BRAND NO LONGER REFLECTS THE BREWERY YOU’VE BECOME
Breweries change.
You might have started out brewing three beers for a handful of local pubs and now have a taproom, a much bigger range, multiple formats and ambitions to get into completely different markets.
The problem comes when the brand never catches up.
What worked brilliantly when you launched might now make you look smaller, cheaper or less established than you really are.
Take a step back and ask whether somebody discovering your brewery today would get an accurate picture of who you are, what makes you different and where you’re heading.
If the answer is no, your brand probably needs some attention.
2. PEOPLE STRUGGLE TO RECOGNISE YOUR BEERS AS YOURS
Put five of your beers next to each other.
Do they immediately look like they belong to the same brewery?
Now imagine those same beers scattered across a bottle shop, supermarket shelf, festival bar or pub fridge.
Would somebody still recognise them?
A strong brewery identity needs enough flexibility to give individual beers their own personality while retaining enough consistency that people know who made them.
If every new beer means starting the design process from scratch, you probably don’t have a strong enough brand system behind the range.
3. YOUR PACKAGING IS GETTING LOST
You can make an incredible beer and still lose the sale before somebody ever gets close enough to taste it.
Drinkers are faced with a ridiculous amount of choice. Your cans, bottles, pump clips and tap badges have to work hard enough to get noticed, understood and remembered.
That doesn’t necessarily mean making everything louder.
It means understanding what makes you distinctive and then making sure those elements are doing their job consistently.
If your packaging constantly disappears amongst the competition, changing another illustration or typeface probably isn’t going to solve the underlying problem.
4. THE BRAND IS STARTING TO GET IN THE WAY OF GROWTH
This is one of the biggest warning signs.
Maybe you’re trying to win new distributors, reach younger drinkers, get into supermarkets, increase direct sales or convince more venues to give you a line.
But the brewery still looks like the business you were five or ten years ago.
At that point branding stops being purely a creative conversation. It becomes a commercial one.
A stronger brand can help change how people perceive the brewery and give sales, marketing and trade teams something much more effective to work with.
A good example is our Vale Brewery rebrand, where strengthening the strategy and identity gave the brewery a much stronger platform for growth
5. NOBODY CAN EXPLAIN WHAT MAKES YOUR BREWERY DIFFERENT
Ask five people in the business what makes your brewery special.
If you get five completely different answers, there’s probably work to do.
Your brand needs something stronger underneath the visual identity. A clear position, a defined audience, a reason people should care and a consistent way of talking about all of it.
Without that foundation, marketing becomes incredibly difficult.
Every social post starts from zero. Sales messages change depending on who writes them. Packaging tries to tell different stories. Eventually everything becomes a bit muddled.
A rebrand is often as much about fixing this strategic stuff as it is designing a new logo.
6. THE PEOPLE YOU WANT TO ATTRACT HAVE CHANGED
The customers who got your brewery started don’t necessarily have to be the only customers who take it forward.
Perhaps you want to reach younger drinkers, attract more people into the taproom, sell beyond your local area or appeal to people who don’t consider themselves hardcore craft beer fans.
The question is whether your existing brand helps or hinders that move.
You don’t need to abandon loyal customers to attract new ones. But you do need to understand what existing drinkers value, what new audiences need and where those two things can meet.
That’s where proper audience and brand strategy becomes incredibly useful.
7. YOU KEEP FIXING INDIVIDUAL BITS BUT NOTHING REALLY CHANGES
New labels.
New website.
Updated logo.
Different social templates.
Another tweak to the pump clips.
Six months later, you’re back in exactly the same place.
This normally happens when a brewery keeps treating the symptoms instead of stepping back and understanding the bigger problem.
Sometimes you genuinely only need to improve one part of the brand. Other times there are problems with positioning, messaging, identity and packaging that all connect.
That’s why I always recommend working out what actually needs fixing before deciding what needs redesigning.
Wondering what that level of work might involve financially? I’ve broken down the typical cost of brewery branding and rebranding here.
DOES NEEDING A REBRAND MEAN STARTING AGAIN?
Not necessarily.
One of the biggest mistakes breweries can make is assuming a rebrand means throwing away everything they’ve already built.
There may already be loads of value in your existing brand. Recognition in the local area, familiar colours, a well-known name, loyal customers or individual beers people actively look for.
The job isn’t to change things simply because they’re old.
It’s to work out what still has value, what is holding the brewery back and what needs to evolve to get you where you want to go next.
Sometimes that means a complete transformation. Sometimes it means keeping the strongest parts of the existing identity and building a much better system around them.
That’s why the strategic work should come before anyone starts designing.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO BEFORE REBRANDING YOUR BREWERY?
Before you commission a new logo or start redesigning the beer range, take a step back.
Start by looking at the brewery as it exists today.
What are people buying?
What are they ignoring?
What do customers already recognise?
Where are you struggling to grow?
Who do you want to attract next?
What parts of the current brand are still doing a good job?
That gives you a much better starting point than simply deciding the brewery “looks old” and needs changing.
A good rebrand should solve a business problem.
It should make the brewery easier to understand, easier to recognise, easier to sell and more relevant to the people you want to reach.
That might lead to a new identity.
It might lead to better packaging.
It might lead to clearer positioning and messaging.
Or it might show you that the existing brand needs far less work than you originally thought.
The important bit is diagnosing the problem before jumping to the solution.
THINK YOUR BREWERY MIGHT BE READY FOR A CHANGE?
If some of these signs feel familiar, you don’t need to know exactly what the answer is before getting in touch.
That’s part of the job.
We can look at where your brewery is now, what you’re trying to achieve and whether the problem sits in the strategy, identity, packaging, marketing or a combination of them.
Sometimes the answer is a complete rebrand.
Sometimes it isn’t.
Either way, you’ll come away with a much clearer idea of what needs fixing next.
Book a free initial call and let’s have a look at where your brewery could go next.
