Brand Identity

The other day I saw a Facebook post of a friend asking another friend if they had a beer in the area that they live.  I looked at the beer's label and thought I recognized it as one I had had before and wanted to help a friend out.  Upon a quick search I was able to find the beer and where it was distributed, unfortunately not anywhere close to either one of my friends.  Upon finding the beer, I was surprised it was one that I had never had and could not figure out why it looked familiar.

During my wondering about the familiarity of the beer label, I began to think how important it is to a brewery to have an easily recognizable beer brand identity.  I am sure many beer drinkers either consciously or unconsciously chose a beer to drink because of the label or some other part of the beer brand.  To them the brand identity equals a quality beer.

Some of you may be wondering what I am talking about when I say beer brand identity.  It is that special quality that is associated with that particular beer.  Here are a few examples:  the shark (actually a dogfish) on Dogfish head beer, the portrait on a Sam Adams bottle (no that is not actually Sam Adams on the bottle, it is Paul Revere) and the special script Budweiser on a bottle or a can of Budweiser.  These breweries along with many others have taken great time and pride in making their brand recognizable.

Once a beer drinker finds a style of beer or a brand that they like, they become conditioned to look for that familiar label or emblem.  Yes we are just a step above Pavlov's dog when it comes to beer.  That brewery becomes their favorite and they usually remain loyal to that brewery.  This is why breweries are so concerned with trademark infringement and protecting their brand.

A couple breweries that I know will go to litigation to protect their brand are Budweiser and  Pete's Brewing Company.  Budweiser has a continuing court battle on going around the world against Budvar ( the original Budweiser), lately AB InBev has been winning most of the court cases thus in the U.S. we see Budvar.  Pete's is very protective of their Strawberry Blonde, they even have sent a cease and desist letter to a local brewpub that makes a blonde ale with strawberry.  So needless to say they did not get "bent" out of shape and changed the beer's name to Strawberry Ale, a more generic term.

There are other breweries that have taken the route of working things out without lawyers.  A good example is Collaboration not Litigation Ale, brewed by Avery Brewing and Russian River Brewing which they brewed together after they found out that they both had a beer called Salvation.   Since they are friends they decided to work things out over a beer instead of getting ugly about it.

Another big reason that breweries are protective of their labels and brands is that it is a big capital outlay to produce the labels and brands.  Many breweries pay either a marketing company or an artist to develop and produce the labels.  Also once the breweries come up with the labels they then have to have the labels approved by the ABC, both state and federal level in most cases.  The ABC has strict guidelines as to what is acceptable and if it is borderline it will not be approved.  So it is very important to the brewery, since they had a large cash outlay to produce the label.

Once a label or brand is produced the brewery will usually take the steps to at least copyright if not trademark the brand or label.  It is reputed that the oldest registered trademark is the red triangle of Bass Brewery in England, they have been registered since 1875.  A couple other breweries claiming long trademark usage are Lowenbrau and Stella Artois.  As you can see breweries are very protective of their brands and labels.

So next time you grab a beer take a look at the label before you take a drink and ponder what they brewery is trying to say with their label.  Then just try to image how long it took for the brewery to get the label in your hand.

QC Beerguy