Starting The Branding Process – Building A Brand, Episode 1

what does it take to start a business it's a great American dream story there's something inside a lot of people in the hear like you sold your house you put your job you built a brewery how do you stand out in a crowded marketplace no one's gonna know that our product is good especially when it goes onto the shelves unless you know that packaging in the marketing is there once you hit the shelf you're competing with everybody else and when you're ready to grow your brand what's the first step and I've been doing our design work up until now and I'm not like how to present sure of myself in this series we'll give you a rare glimpse of what happens behind closed doors will follow creative directors Matthew and Cena and Ben burns as they lead their client hamiltonfamily brewery through the branding process from start to finish this is building a brain this is blind a brand strategy design consultancy based in Santa Monica California since 1995 blind has used the power of design to help diverse clients reach their customers and stand out in the marketplace my name is Ben burns I am the digital director here at blind and a muscle of brand strategist I'm Matthew ensign I'm a creative director here at blind and me and Ben are leading the team here as we move forward in this expedition rebranding hamiltonfamily brewery scott walks in one day he's our executive producer and he's like hey you want to join me on this call it's a lead it's a brewery I think you'd be a good fit for it yeah sure it's kind of random out of the blue so we jump on a call and on the other side of the phone I mean I could hear his beard through the phone we go through the normal first meeting questions that we ask people and part of that is trying to honor the budget when we get there I can tell that we may not be a good fit and so I kind of left that call thinking like maybe we won't be able to help him but on that first call I could tell that he was real he was genuine and he really wanted guidance he wanted help because his business was growing and the brand needed to catch up Josh along with his wife Kristin have operated hamiltonfamily brewery for almost five years with one simple philosophy beer is like the icing on the cake of life you know it's it's something to be thankful for shared with friends sort of good beer to good people that kind of thing and they can get behind that there we love people up here and you have a customer for life so I think some of the big things that I understand from your initial meeting with Josh is that they're looking to scale right they're almost bursting at the seams at this point they've been operating this business for a couple of years josh has been doing everything DIY himself and that now they're ready to hit retail hit the shelves and that's a very important moment for a business like this because once you hit retail once you hit the shelf you're competing with everybody else there's so much competition so while he might be doing very successfully in his own small town within his brewery now he's going to be competing with all the big boys on the shelf so I'm hoping that's something that we can help him with in terms of redesigning his brand identity and repositioning his business properly so that he stands out in the market what is a rebrand well first let's start by defining what a brand is according to Marty new Meyer a brand is a person's gut feeling about an organization person or company this is influenced by their visual aesthetic the sound of their messaging and their overall positioning in the market so a rebrand is simply an adjustment of the customer touch points that affect the impact of the overall experience sometimes it's an incremental update and other times it's a complete makeover before we know how much work needs to get done for hamiltonfamily brewery we need to sit down with them and understand their brand their customers and their goals who is hamiltonfamily brewery hi my name is Josh Hamilton my wife and I own hamiltonfamily brewery and Rancho Cucamonga California I'm Christine Hamilton I am co-owner with Owen my husband of Hamilton family brewery the whole way we got into this was I brewed in my backyard and I fell in love and it was the first time I ever knew like this is what I want to do with my life and I never really had a passion it's like that's what I want to spend my life's work doing until I met beer but there was no way it's it's so expensive to do it my wife and I had a second baby on the way I was working two full-time jobs and I was like man I'm doing all this so I can pay a mortgage for a house that all I do is sleep in I had an idea to ask my wife one night in the long drive home like what if he sold the house and we took the money and we started a brewery who sold the house in like three days moved in with her folks he found that spot got that open in about seven months which at the time was I got hurt at most breweries took about a year and a half we did it in seven we needed to I mean we were down to like our bank account was at zero on opening day you know that was the first time we were about to open the doors her getting ready and my wife's like what if no one shows up and I was like oh I haven't had a chance to think about that you know but luckily we open the door 15 minutes early and there was a line of people and it just never stopped so now they're up and running but a craft brewery needs original and enticing flavors to keep people coming in so where did those initial ideas come from I'm shopping with the kids at the grocery store and I see a display of a certain fruit I think oh gosh that would be pretty cool we should add that to a beer so it's kind of just like there's a whole lot of input around me forming that kind of thing like the whole idea for Mango as they were on sale at stater brothers when we were shopping buddy yeah a buddy and I when we were just home brewers we were just sorry we were buying stuff to barbecue in the backyard and also brew a batch of beer it's like where we all started and they had mangoes for a buck apiece I was like do you think those would be good in beer and he's like yeah this let's grab one let's try and put them in this pail and then over the years the pale turned into an IPA into a double IPA and you know it's double mango like a rule I have personally is like if is it a beer that I'm gonna want to drink another pint of and then determine if we're gonna brew it again so the first time you met Josh and you learned about them as a client what was your take on them the business was more to him than dollars and cents and the business was more to him than making a product it was about people is about connecting with people and he summed that up with that the tagline love people love beer it's our mission statement it's our goal and it's our driving force and we put it in that order intentionally because it's not love beer love people what's the what good is the greatest bottle of beer if there's no one there to drink it and I've been doing our design work up until now and I'm not like how to present sure of myself oh man that logo well we're not the logo and I wanted to put so much meaning that does not get translated at all we were Ranchos first craft brewery I was born and raised out here so I was proud of that so we wanted to tie our brand in with the historic elements of the city being their first brewery so this is a Cucamonga Falls it soon are you expecting your customers to be like Nicholas Cage and that national treasure movie ever with the meaning what prized is at the end of this road I don't know that crazy like all in four color small font weird stuff logo I've made it cause more problems just from a practical standpoint like how does this look on a bottle cap I was look on a koozie obviously the logo is like super cluttered it's really dense it's not legible in small sizes these are this is all the stuff that he that he wanted to fix mm-hmm but when I talked to Josh and realized how much hidden meaning was behind every single element of the logo we weren't even communicating to our customer what we were hoping to there was so much like insider like yeah we were trying to create a sense of like history and heritage and a family tree yeah that was an accident the tree is on there because it's part of the Hamilton so just assumed whatever they thought it was and that wasn't even what we were going for so logo is more or less the face of a company so what makes for a good logo well according to legendary designer Ziggy Javie that must be three things must be appropriate for the context it must be remember and it must be simple so that it works at any scale whether it's really tiny on your phone or on the side of a building for hamiltonfamily brewery it's gonna apply to a lot of customer touch points basically what we're gonna be doing is redoing his logo mm-hmm doing two versions of packaging templates that he can tap into and and at a later date and then we're also gonna be doing his website hmm and we're gonna try and tie everything together with a style guide that he can use to influence all the other touch points of his brand right if we can come up with like the parameters we playing what represents us well and everybody loves bearded hipster dragon slaying unicorn cupcake flying ninja rainbows how does what is what is Hamilton's version of a ninja rainbow are you uh are you worried about this one um I'm kind of half in half right now Josh could go to retail with the brand he has now but it would be a bumpy bumpy road so I want to on our next episode we're going to take you through discovery the process that we use to help a client refine how they see themselves and to find who they're trying to market to this whole thing is just about me asking questions and then the questions are meant to spark a conversation I think our product is good but no one's gonna know that our product is good especially when it goes onto the shelves unless you know though that packaging in the marketing is there our hometown crowd gets us that you know they we've shipped their hands in the tasting room we've made connections there and that goes a long way with them but now it's gonna be a can of beer sitting on a shelf that someone's gonna need to connect with in future episodes we'll use that information to create style scapes which will help to define the look and feel of Hamilton's new identity starting to use the crest art badge right this jewel shield thing I could see that replicated throughout I really like the colors white a bit all right so we're calling this one built to last it's really cool these style scales will be the backbone of the logo work website design and branding we will create for them I've literally not seen anything Emanuel done and his skill with the pen and paper and the way that he constructs his lockups it's just awesome and so as soon as he opened his book of life stay tuned for building a brand right here on the future so the whole purpose of this part of the discussion is to talk about the deliverables what do you think deliverables me

Channel: The Futur

Views: 524,242

Rating: 4.9646282 out of 5

Keywords: the futur, futur brand, disrupt design education, chris do, business of design, how to, Branding, Building A Brand, Hamilton Family Brewery, Matthew Encina, Ben Burns, Josh Hamilton, Crysten Hamilton, Beer, Beer Brewing, Re Branding, Logo Design, Package Design, Web Design, craft beer, Blind, Brand Identity, Identity Design, brand strategy, graphic design, how to build a brand, what is branding, branding your business, matthew encina, ben burns, personal brand, series

Id: mxgOY2Ms-YI

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/pattydee43]

This whole series is a treat to watch and super informative. Highly recommend.