What You’re Working to Frame
What You’re Working to Frame

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What You’re Working to Frame

The next phase of the rebranding process is diving headlong into framing your brand strategy and creative brief.

Let’s downshift and imagine the following: Your team and your design firm are wrapping up an evening after a full day’s work. You’ve spent the last few days together eating and drinking your way through the city, scoping out the competition and getting a feel for the local culture.

You’ve brewed beer together, put down a few too many beers together, had in-depth conversations with your distributor, and visited a handful of your key retail and on-premises accounts. The bartender at this dive fine establishment declared last call (it’s 2am already?!?) and bleary-eyed, you’re sharing your deepest secrets with each other (statutes of limitation be damned). Everything you now say will be used (and only used) to develop your brand strategy. Nothing confessed at this horrendously late hour will ever be shared outside of this project. You take a deep breath and answer the following questions:

  • Why do you exist? Why do you work in the beer industry?
  • What do you love most and hate most about craft beer?
  • Why should people care about your brewery?
  • Why do you care? What are your brand values and vision?
  • What’s the story behind your brewery and beer names?
  • What is one word to describe your brewery?
  • What’s the coolest thing about your brewery?
  • What do you want to be known for?
  • What do you wish you could change about your brewery?
    (Again, this is all confidential)
  • Describe your local beer scene (trends, your market share and your perceptions)
  • Who’s your competition? How do your competitors market/brand themselves? Are any of them doing a great job?
  • What sets you apart from your competition? What’s one thing you can completely own?
  • Who drinks your beer? Who are your people?
  • Is there any messaging we should avoid?
  • Where do you see your brewery in the next five years? Or, the next ten?
  • If you had a celebrity endorsement, who would it be?
  • If your brewery were a person, what personality traits would he or she have? (Or if you like, imagine your spirit animal instead…)

The morning after

Your design team wakes up at 4:45am (and yes, they managed to make it back to their Airbnb). Bedraggled, they call an Uber for their 6:15am flight back home. They’ve got a meeting at 2:30pm and a presentation at 4pm. All in a day’s work.

Once they’re back in town and have recovered from the trip’s festivities, they’ll begin to work through their field and start framing your brewery’s positioning, mission, vision and values, audience, personality, voice and brand essence.

Let’s see if we can work through this without the horrible hangover, shall we?