When is a marketing strategy not a marketing strategy? Can social media alone sustain a brewery? What makes public relations different from other tactics in the marketing toolkit? Kevin York, founder of the eponymous craft beer-centric communications agency, tells it all after a decade in business.
Kevin’s clients include Lone Pine Brewing, Bent Water Brewing, West Sixth Brewing, Sunriver Brewing, Greater Good Imperial Brewing and the Virginia Beer Company.
In the latest edition of A Round With – a recurring Q&A series with industry leaders exclusively for Brewbound Insiders – York shares how he built his business, why storytelling matters more than ever and the craft beer origin story that’s sure to bore drinkers.
Here is our conversation with Kevin:
What drew you to craft beverage producers as a client base?
Kevin: Initially, it was a combination of a change of pace and personal interest. When I first started the agency back in 2014, it coincided with moving to the Boston area from San Francisco.
When I lived in San Francisco I started to get into craft beer, but at that time, there weren’t very many breweries in the city. You always think about the West Coast as the birthplace of craft beer – places like Portland, Seattle, and San Diego. San Francisco didn’t really have it yet. You had to go further north in the state to find it. It was really just Anchor, 21st Amendment, and Speakeasy.
After moving to Boston I was blown away by the scene here – Idle Hands, Night Shift, Mystic, Bent Water, Trillium, Lord Hobo, Slumbrew. It felt like they were everywhere. I really got into it and the industry was experiencing exponential growth, so when I thought about diversification of our client base, craft beer popped into my mind immediately.
After we brought one craft brewery on board, we started getting interest from others and we rode the wave, expanding beyond New England to breweries in all parts of the country. It seemed like it was a niche that not many others were focusing on. Eventually, craft beer became the biggest segment of our client base.
KYC’s client roster also includes musicians, artists and community organizations to support both. How can craft brewers and other beverage makers interact with groups like this in a meaningful way?
Kevin: It’s helpful to consider just how many people we’re marketing to – or should be marketing to. A lot of people drink beer, but relatively few would consider themselves craft beer enthusiasts. We need to figure out ways to reach all those people who aren’t following breweries on Instagram, reading industry trades, or going to GABF [the Great American Beer Festival].
Collaboration beers have become the default opportunity to reach into a new consumer segment, and that’s a good starting point, but we always challenge our clients to think beyond that. How do you continue showing attention to that new segment once the collab beer sells out?
A good example is a partnership we helped arrange prior to COVID. It involved one of our beer clients and a nonprofit group focused on outdoor recreation and events. They were partnering on an event that was essentially a beer festival, but it was changing how we typically look at beer festivals. It was going to be hosted on an island with activities like hiking, kayaking, and birding offered. At night, our client and two other breweries would serve beers alongside food while a concert was happening. Attendees would camp overnight and a beer brunch would be offered the next morning.
Beer wasn’t the central focus, but our client wanted to show this segment that they understood them. It was an opportunity to reach consumers who drink beer, but were more interested in the island camping experience or the concert or the rec activities. Beer enhanced the experience rather than being the total experience.
Of course, then COVID hit, everything changed, and it unfortunately never ended up happening. But I still love the idea we came up with!
You founded KYC 10 years ago. What have been some of your favorite success stories in the past decade?
Kevin: My very favorite story is something we worked on in 2022 and 2023, and it went beyond PR. We’ve developed a lot of relationships in beer over the years and started hearing a common complaint from people: We wish there were more professional development opportunities for beer marketers.
The sentiment we were hearing is that most of that education is geared toward production and operations, and when professional development is offered for marketing, it tends to be from some of the same people within the industry over and over. There was a desire to hear marketing success stories from marketers outside the industry.
Since we worked with both breweries and non-beer organizations, it felt like we were in a good spot to try to fill this gap. We started planning in 2022 and in early 2023 hosted the Beer Amplified Marketing Conference for Breweries. It was a two-day event and featured speakers from entirely outside of beer.
The CMO of the Boston Red Sox was the keynote speaker. The head of branding for Yard House spoke, as did the head of marketing analytics for Lyft and head of partnerships for Life Is Good. Topics covered areas like SEO, paid social, e-commerce, building a marketing tech stack, and community relations. Then we divided attendees into small groups where they could share learnings with each other.
It was the biggest thing we’ve ever done as an agency and the biggest thing I’ve done in my career.
Beer and storytelling have likely been linked for millennia. How has this changed in the digital age?
Kevin: It’s opened more opportunities for storytelling with the potential to reach even more people.
Just think about all the vehicles we have for storytelling. Even specifically through media, where a lot of my time is spent – digital outlets, print outlets, broadcast, radio, podcasts, Substack, daily newsletters, online video, influencers across social media. It’s a vast landscape for storytelling with a lot of different media formats.
We’ve become so focused on the relatively newer digital forms of storytelling that I think we often forget about that most simple form: verbal.
We frequently talk with clients about their taproom staff and their sales team. Are those folks being trained or informed on the stories you’re telling through social media? Those exchanges are actually where you’re closest to your customers, either the consumer or an account buyer.
It may not seem like PR, but it definitely is, and if you’re not focused on extending your storytelling to your taproom staff and sales team you’re missing some significant opportunities.
Storytelling has to align across different channels and mediums and be cohesive. You want to be aligned everywhere.
To borrow an old meme, it’s much more complicated than Step 1. Open brewery, Step 2. Tell story on social media, Step 3. ????, Step 4. Profit. What do breweries sometimes not realize about the infamous third step?
Kevin: You mean besides that there actually is a Step 3?
Step 3 is massive, arguably the largest step. I feel like only recently has the mindset in craft beer shifted where people are realizing that Field of Dreams isn’t reality. “If you build it they will come” doesn’t work. It takes a lot of effort in sales and marketing. And similarly, “if you brew it they will come” doesn’t work either.
The industry was able to sort of coast for a while, knowing that the consumers’ chase for new could really help a brewery sustain revenue. That’s disappeared.
We’re now much more similar to most other industries in the world, where you need solid sales and marketing operations and you need sales and marketing strategies. If you don’t have those and you’re relying pretty exclusively on that step 2 – social media – to fulfill those sales and marketing functions for you, you’re in trouble.
What do breweries stand to gain from getting their story out there?
Kevin: Your story is your differentiation. It’s how you stand out from the competition.
The beer industry has grown significantly over the past 10 years and has become much more competitive. You’re competing with so many breweries to get that visit or purchase. You need to show how you’re different.
The brewery stories I’ve seen tend to be pretty similar: A person or group of friends liked craft beer, started homebrewing, and eventually decided to go to the next level and open a brewery. That’s boring. It was boring 10 years ago, but it’s become especially stale now. It doesn’t stand out and it doesn’t make people want to form any kind of loyal relationship with you.
Your story has to go deeper than that and contain elements that are specific only to you. That’s what makes it interesting. What makes your brewery unique? What’s your founder’s life experience? Or maybe the founder(s) isn’t your story. Maybe it’s your location or the styles you make. Your story could be a lot of things, but it needs to be unique and interesting.
What is one misconception among craft beverage brands about marketing and communication that you wish you could change?
Kevin: I’m going to cheat a little and give two misconceptions.
The first is that marketing and communications (PR) are the same thing. They actually shouldn’t be used interchangeably.
To explain it in very simple terms: Marketing is promoting a product or service with a focus on generating revenue. PR is focused on shaping perception, creating trust and credibility, and forming relationships. Each has its purpose. I think PR is actually undervalued in craft beer. If you think about the importance of community in the beer industry, that’s all PR.
The other misconception, and probably the larger one in beer, is that your marketing program can be executed entirely through social media. I can’t tell you how many breweries I’ve talked to that are unable to tell me what their marketing strategy is. Many simply don’t have one, and I have to figure out how to nicely tell them that publishing one post per day on social media accounts isn’t a marketing strategy.
If you’re asked about your marketing strategy and your response talks only about social media, you don’t have a marketing strategy. You might have a social media strategy, but relying solely on social media in today’s landscape is not the ticket to growth.