Smartmouth, founded in Norfolk, VA, is a brewery with a unique approach to the craft beer scene. They created some beautifully marketed beers that garnered them a lot of attention in 2019.
They also had competed in one of the biggest beer competitions, in the world, Great American Beer Fest, and won a gold medal for their Safety Dance Pilsner. This was a huge win for them and they wanted to share their success with the world in a more strategic way.
Our mission was to help them capitalize on this newfound recognition with a redesigned brand strategy and dynamic content that would help grab the attention of their audience and attract newcomers to their social platforms, and eventually their taproom.
Challenge
They liked their social content and found that the static images and carousels were somewhat stagnant for engagement. They wanted to revisit their brand strategy and see how they could better engage with their customers while also attracting new customers. Outcome
While the commercial/logo/video always kept the product front and center, it was the brand design that really went to work positioning Smartmouth and their award-winning beer with a more vibrant and dynamic perspective.
Services: Brand Strategy, Creative Direction, Motion Graphics, Video
THE GOAL
Their mission was updating their content to reflect their new brand name, brand messaging and brand confidence for their premium products. The expectation was that this would lead to an increased customer acquisition, better engagement on their platforms, and new partnerships.
Our mission was to help give them creative direction and design content to reflect their fun and colorful brand identity across all outlets.
THE CHALLENGE
They had come off of several successes over the years and felt they had a good advantage over the competition. After a few years, there has been an ever-growing number of breweries in their city with some great beer, good branding, and Smartmouth wanted to get better engagement with the brand, stay top of mind, and want to stand out better than their competition.
The Backstory
This story first needs to start with how we first got connected. I had taken a picture of some of the can discards from their canning line while I was walking around. In their dumpster, there was 1 blue can in a sea of white cans, and I snapped a photo, threw it on my IG story, and tagged Smartmouth. Their social media manager saw it and wanted to know the backstory!
DEVELOPING THE creative direction
After that fun exchange, we decided to work together on a new brand strategy that stopped viewers and made them think a bit more. Chances are that if you're into craft beer, you follow a lot of breweries, beer influencers, and local food trucks. It can be hard to stand out on social media when people are mindlessly scrolling.
We brainstormed with their marketing director a strategy that would break this cycle. We wanted to understand what pieces of their messaging were working and also wanted to see what could be done differently. This led to research on a lot of breweries in the area for differentiators. We found that some of the takeaways were that Smartmouth was:
the most vibrant, the most casual, and moving images were most engaging, whether it was a simple animation or a quick video clip. There was June 15th astrocat.
We decided to lean into those 3 elements and that would set the landscape for all the creative and production work that would follow.
CREATING THE CONTENT
We laid out the priorities:
- Motion graphics logo, taking it from a simple 2d image to a strong, & powerful 3d animation, which could function as an opener and closer
- Simple ping-pong or loopable cans with animations
- VFX-integrated video clips
The core messaging was to keep it colorful, casual & playful. As long as we did that, we had free reign to go where our ideas took us.
We got started with their core products. The content we created would be used for numerous applications. They would use it on their website's landing page and in blogs posts. For media opportunities, they wanted to have a media kit available that they felt confident in. When meeting with potential partners, they wanted to make a great first impression and showcase what their brand and the product were all about. And of course, they needed to advertise and engage with the customers on the social platforms.
THE Animated content
We put together many concepts to show a more playful and energetic brand. We tied in the sense of a desert & water to represent the brand's core identity. We showcased their evergreen products in exactly that way.
The athletic-focused consumer is really the brand's hero. This targeted group of people need to feel connected to the brand somehow and seeing it promoted with athletic wear and other signage like the gym & beach posters really help to empower their target consumer.
It's no surprise that loopable content does better, people can watch it a few times over. Not only does this keep them on your content longer, but it also helps the algorithm get you further reach. The gold medal was an obvious choice since it, in fact, did win the gold medal at GABF.
The VFX Clip
We had wanted to add some other exciting elements to their content design. We brainstormed a few different ideas of what could be fun besides animation and pushing to the CGI world, we realized we could be even more playful and exciting. We had a bunch of different scenarios and we all felt that 'popping in' for a beer at their beachfront Pilot House would be fun and captivating.
THE motion graphic logo
Keeping true to the strategy, we wanted something elegant and dynamic. We also wanted to have some golden undertones to subtly signify the recently won gold medal. The 2 brewery locations are set in a more industrial warehouse area and that sparked some of the ideas that followed; a yellow container ship siding with some beautiful lighting.
THE Results
Smartmouth has enjoyed a successful rollout of its new brand identity. They used the content at the core of their website & social platforms. They have felt like they have a brand that brings a fun, imaginative perspective to their world of beer. Finally, they have a brand that manages the one they've envisioned.
They saw better retention to their website and social platforms. With the new strategy and the improved aesthetics, they had improved brand confidence and differentiation.
WANT TO WORK WITH US?
"Whoa, this was great! Wanted to say thanks again for an incredible experience. It was a nice shake-up from the norm and I learned a ton! I really appreciate the time and energy!"
- Jordan Trotter, Marketing Director, Smartmouth Brewing