“We’re piloting our brand alongside a creative firm that’s very
quickly become a group of friends.”

– Blake Crawford and Michael Roosevelt,
co-founders and owners of Alementary Brewing Company

Client: Alementary Brewing Company, a craft beer brewery in Hackensack, NJ.

Challenge: Alementary Brewing operates in a crowded and growing market with a lot of local New Jersey competition. The brewery is known and respected for its flagship beer, Hackensack Lager, and two others that comprise its three leading beers. However, given the competition for shelf space in the region’s supermarkets and liquor stores, and the strong name recognition of other local craft breweries, Alementary’s principals engaged Rapunzel Creative Marketing for rebranding and updated sales materials to support its sales team and marketing efforts.

Strategy: The Rapunzel team undertook a full competitive analysis, conducted interviews with the sales team, and did in-store and customer research to find out consumer sentiment about Alementary’s varieties vis-à-vis other craft beers, understand the local craft beer market, and provide guidance to the owners about brand positioning.

Rapunzel then held a branding workshop with the client, which looked at brand attributes, unique selling propositions (USPs), the brand mission statement, and a review of the brand logo and tagline.

As part of the review, it became evident that the owners’ backstories–significant careers as a chemical engineer and a molecular biologist–was not reflected in an obvious way. Although the product logo is a rendering of an atom and the former tagline alluded to science (“drinking for science”), it did not tie together in the branding.

“Their shared passion for the science of craft brewing is what led them to start the company when they realized they couldn’t find good beer in the area. However, the existing sales materials did not tell this story or convey their self-proclaimed “geekiness” about bringing microbiology to the craft beer fermentation and production process,” said Lynn Gregorski, president of Rapunzel Creative. “They are all about creating products that speak to their mission of delivering “real beer” taste with contemporary flavor profiles; our goal was to deliver branding and marketing materials that reflect that.”.

Marketing Deliverables:

Out of that workshop, the Rapunzel team developed an updated brand positioning statement, a new “elevator pitch,” and a revised tagline, “Better Drinking Through Science,” that better supports the owners’ scientific approach to craft beer brewing. In addition, the Rapunzel designers refreshed the logo in several key ways:

  • We changed the typeface used for the company name to something bolder and more modern.
  • We altered how the word mark sits in relation to the atom artwork to help it stand out more readily.
  • We made the atom artwork bolder so it is more prominent on the labels (and the market shelf).

“We’re becoming bolder and more daring, but we’re still not jumping on fads.
We’re pushing hard on creativity. We’re owning the geeky cool vibe…”

Before

After

Cans Feature the New Logo

The new positioning provided the framework for updated sales cards requested by the sales team to bring on sales calls to beer distributors and local establishments. One card was written and designed for Hackensack Lager (a multiple-award-winning beer) and another for all three of the flagship brews (Hackensack Lager, A-Game and Random Placement of Things). The new distributor cards feature fresh artwork with the new logo and tagline, descriptive copy that succinctly encapsulates the taste profile while also reflecting the science behind the beers, and provides relevant statistics about each beer.

Delighted branding clients

Blake Crawford and Michael Roosevelt, co-founders and owners of Alementary Brewing Company, recently shared their rebranding experience on the brewery’s blog, which is excerpted here:

“As we’ve grown and evolved, it was time for a big change: to switch up our look! An exhaustive search turned up our new friends at Rapunzel Creative (who) got busy crafting the next generation Alementary brand. Our logo has been updated to fit our cool nerd vibe…”

They also told us that “The feedback from our team and our customers is universally positive. Everyone “gets it” right away and immediately identifies the beers with Alementary without being told the logo is new. It’s a very natural evolution that’s gotten people excited about the brand again, which is what we wanted.”

Rapunzel Creative also provided guidance to the client about building its overall sales around the three flagship brews, by generating higher sales lift on those by building greater market presence and awareness of them.

Are you looking to build your brand’s market presence with fresh brand positioning and marketing collateral? Contact Rapunzel Creative to set up a marketing consultation.