Craft Beer and Thought Starters

©Matchstic

I recently attended a webinar from Matchstic (an Atlanta branding agency) about their recent work on the rebrand of Monday Night Brewing (an Atlanta craft brewery). Webinar was led by the Matchstic Founder & Creative Director Blake Howard and MNB Co-Founder Jonathan Baker. It was interesting to get insight from both sides of the process especially because MNB was more interested in the overall product strategy than the brand strategy (which is not what you would expect from a branding-specific project). Here are some points that stuck out:

• Nowadays, people order a particular beer, not just a brand of beer (ie. you're gonna order a tropicalia, not a creature comforts), and because of that, the brand needed to be flexible enough to showcase each individual beer while still being consistent

• The rebrand was for MNB new potential customers (to grab attention on grocery store shelves) and they trusted that the people who loved their beer would still love the beer regardless of the change to the logo and design of the can

• MNB struggled after first design round and asked themselves if it was really worth it, in Baker's words "If we are going to let go of the past, it has to be for something that was worth it" (in reference to visually moving away from their previous logo)

• A piece of advice from Baker to anyone else considering a rebrand: "You need a strong point of view as a brand, so if you rebrand to anything less than that you are doing yourself a disservice"

• MNB did not do any customer polling in terms of the rebrand process because they needed a brand that reflected who they were, and they know who they are better than their consumers do

Here's the link to the case study on the rebrand for those interested in looking at the full scope of work!