Where everyone knows your game
Learning to understand what makes a brand work for their existing customers while trying to attract a new audience
A Brand that Connects
the first iteration
The original idea for this project began as a study of the basic elements of the brewery. I took the elements of the name and the business and explored where that could go. While I think it was a good start, I wanted to push this idea further. I wanted to see what a full branding system would look like beyond just a logo.
the regulars
and
the soon to be regulars
Before diving in, I needed to know who I was trying to attract and also who I was trying to keep!
The soon to be Regular
Persona one: Bryce
Main focuses:
High expendable income
Child friendly environment required
Big on local third spaces
Bryce is one of the many new transplants that
have arrived in Austin over the last decade. He was born in Iowa but went to college at
UC Berkley's Hass School of Business. He lived in California post grad but found it too expensive and the move to Austin was triggered by the mass exodus of his friends from California to Austin.
In Austin he heads a small team for a Oracle. His income is 100K plus and he is constantly watching male Austin influencers for tips on the newest restaurants and breweries with friends.
He is married with one child and another on the way. He and his family live in a gentrified neighborhood in East Austin not too far from Manor, where the brewery is. In their spare time they like to focus on kid friendly community events and visiting with their respective coworkers at local businesses that cater to people with kids.
He and his wife are very health conscious, both with active gym/crossfit/pickleball memberships. Drinking beer is more of a social event for them than it is an every day occurrence. When they do drink, they prefer a child friendly, local brewery that always has something new for them when they meet up with friends.
The Native Regular
Persona Two: Richie
Main Focuses:
Medium to Low expendable income
A connection to the original community
Third space centric, but not devoted to just one space.
Richie is part of the original Austin community. Multiple generations of his family are scattered between Round Rock and South Austin. He grew up in the area and likes to talk about what the business used to be and how much it has changed.
Richie is an electrician making $40-80k a year depending on his outreach and regular book of business. He has expendable income but still has a hard time paying for a premium product in an area of town that used to have much more "price conscious" options. He understands the necessity of change but still bristles at seeing his favorite places and people priced out of their communities. He has children but they are adults themselves and regularly shows up to places on the East side alone or with his wife.
He enjoys meeting up with the few people who still remain in the neighborhoods where he grew up. You will find him at Busty's, Carousel Lounge and Joe's Bakery.
Campaigns, Outreach and Marketing funnels
Positioning for Oddwood:
Oddwood Brewing has been around for little less than a decade. They are a very modest neighborhood brewery that serves food, has a popular rotating tap list and just recently introduced a full retail size space for their classic arcade games. They have also, in the last few years, had the good fortune to have the KG BBQ truck in their parking lot, drawing in a voracious audience of BBQ fanatics as the popularity of the truck continues to grow. They should be positioned as a seasoned brewery that has maintained it's local charm. This would be positioning against the larger, more established breweries like ABW. I also think they would do well in the Niche based positioning, as they are the only local brewery in town with a full retail size arcade.
Consumer Psychology for Advertising: Lean into the Belonging aspect of their brand. More and more modern, affordable third spaces are disappearing. Breweries are some of the oldest traditional American third spaces. Lean into the "garage hobbyist hanging with friends around a good pint" narrative. Or an angle of "We are all so busy these days, it's great to have a place to meet up with friends, share a drink, have some food and let the kids run around." The continuing cultural conversation of a "male loneliness" epidemic can be a great springboard for a "you play games online with friends, come together to play in our arcade" narrative.
Three directions to go in for "Belonging" Advertising:
-Getting together with the boys over a good pint while the game is playing
-Meeting up with friends and family to eat good food in a space that the kids can enjoy
-The lone gamers meeting up for tournaments and movie nights
"The Boys"- While breweries are becoming more and more a mixed gendered place for customers, the dominant market demo is still white straight men. Many are beer hobbyists who are experimenting with home brews and their own ales. This hobby is naturally a communal hobby, as you can not make a batch just for one person. Or you can but you run the risk of the beer skunking because you couldn't drink it all fast enough. Brewers love to share their work. They meet up, open the garage door, pop up some folding chairs and sit around watching tv and talking about what they did differently with their latest batch. Oddwood is still a small, neighborhood brewery where this level of interaction can be fostered. The establishment isn't corporate, it aesthetics lend itself to a "garage dad" vibe, and the brewers/owners are always happy to sit and chat with the regulars about what they are making.
Event: Have a monthly brewer discussion leaning into the "home brewer" aspect. Invite local brewer clubs to the brewery to sit and share tips with the staff brewers and owners. You can even have them bring their own beer to taste test offsite at the arcade next door where there is already a BYOB policy in place.
Create a Youtube channel for the brewery that has a series of videos with the brewers describing their process, their ingredients and how they personally have grown as viewers. Create a sense of "bootstrap brewers", guys who went from experimenting in their garage to running silos in a brewery.
"It's been too long"- Whether you attribute the decline of social spaces to the longer lasting effects of the pandemic or the rise of car dependent suburban sprawl or the financial toll of the current economy, the American third space is declining. In East Austin, this issue hits neighborhood natives even harder as they've seen their community centers and local restaurant favorites shuttered and replaced with much more expensive, gentrifier friendly establishments. This is an unique issue for Oddwood as they find themselves literally in the rapidly evolving, Mueller adjacent, East Austin sprawl. Now while initially this idea of reconnecting people over a pint and a pizza was not built on the idea of combating gentrification, I do feel the brewery would do a disservice to the ample local crowd that call it home. This can easily be a dual pronged strategy that incorporates the new and old audience alike. But at it's core, the messaging is, "We are all busy, let's slow down and catch up." This works well with the cultural trend of "going analog", "slow media", and a urge to return to a no screens, community driven hang. While I think this is an easy direction to go in, I don't see the brewery leaning into their natural community gathering abilities at all.
Event: Invite knitting and creative hobbyists to have their group nights at the brewery in a quieter part of the bar. This can be craft groups, knitters, adult book clubs, Warhammer figurine enthusiasts, film conversations hosted by Alamo Drafthouse or Fangoria, etc. The explosion of interest in countertop gaming and card games like Magic the Gathering is a huge window of opportunity for them as they have a lot of table space. This gets groups of people in the door, a mixed audience that maybe has never been to the brewery, and helps to build the narrative that their business is a chill hangout space to catch up with friends.
"The Lone Gamer"- Online gaming has only continued it's domination as the fastest growing online community driven entertainment. Whether it's player walkthroughs via live stream, groups of friends getting together to play Fortnite or Marvel Rivals, gamers are interested in playing with others and watching others play. While the brewery is limited on large group plays(as they only have one large pull down 4k screen), the business can still engage with this audience via more curated gaming events. Having a 18+ game night once a week will bring in a crowd that would normally not show up due to concerns for children running around.
Event: Have tournament nights either on the arcade games that the brewery already has or by connecting a console to their large pull down screen. Host Mario Kart tournaments on the big screen or Street Fighter tournaments. Give all night Happy Hour if you show up with a group of three or more to play at the arcade. Connect with the videogame/tabletop gaming stores in the area and provide a discount code when they play at the brewery.
Concepting
Concepting for Oddwood, I had to take a few major elements of their brand into consideration.
They are first and foremost a brewery. They have a terrific list of core beers with a handful of fan favorites that rotate throughout the year. I decided to keep the hop from my preliminary work and ditch the wood element. While some might not know what a beer hop looks like, those in the know, can identify it a mile away. It’s a unique enough shape and it’s a staple in the beer logo community.
Secondly, they love their video games and pop culture. From day one, their brewery has featured some level of video games either spread throughout the building or as of very recently, in their own separate retail space.
The last element of their brand that I wanted to focus on, though may not include in the design is what I call their “cool dad” vibe. The brewery is reminiscent of a basement level hangout spot where dads from around the block could swing by and have a beer while they or their kids played some classic video games. The projector is always set to local sports or showing an awesome classic 80’s action film. It’s a big part of what makes them a great third space. It feels like home but with great beer and full arcade!
Counting
coins
I spent a lot of time exploring different elements and directions to go in in regards to creating a logo and I kept coming back to video games. It makes sense; video games are a huge part of this breweries brand. But I didn’t want to approach it in an obvious way. Maybe this was for better or for worse but I decided to go beyond creating a 36 bit hop and brand elements for them and moved into the elements WITHIN the video games themselves. I landed on one object that kept popping up again and again in different games: the gold coin. So many games have this basic element connecting them so I wanted to use this idea to connect the brewery and gaming elements. I wanted it to be double sided so it would work from a couple of different viewpoints. I needed to incorporate the brewery aspect as well as the videogame aspect on top of the coin.
I also spent a lot of time working with the “odd” element of Oddwood. I wanted a typeface that was unique and fun, but wasn’t too out there for a casual brewery customer.
In the end I realized that a sans serif, bold font works so much better than anything else I was looking at. It’s clean, very similar to their original typeface(which I think is their strongest original branding element) and it’s less likely to take attention away from any other element I use.
Client
The Atlas Project
Year
01/01/0001
Finalizing the logo
I created the coin shape after a traditional coin with no ridges but a just a simple rim to show depth. I was concerned that the ridges would make the design too busy.
The arcade element with the hopes and vines was much trickier than I was expecting it to be. But the layout as I have it now feels the simplest while still conveying what the business does.
And the font is very simple, rigid, with a nice outline to make it interesting and not have it fade against the coin.
Final Assets
I’ve made a couple variations on the design I created to check it’s versatility and I’m really happy with how it all came out. I did a lot of research to find the right way to pair these elements all together and I’m excited to continue pushing this idea further in the future!
