Pop quiz: What is Deschutes’ top-selling brand in its home market of Oregon? That’s Mirror Pond Pale Ale. What about in neighboring Washington state — and Alaska? Well, that’s Black Butte Porter. How about in the rest of its footprint? It’s Fresh Squeezed IPA.
In fact, in Deschutes’ home state, Fresh Squeezed is just its fourth best-selling brand, trailing legacy brands Mirror Pond and Black Butte, as well as its seasonal program, according to VP of sales and marketing Neal Stewart. And that presents both a unique challenge and an opportunity.
“I can’t think of another brewery that is nearly the scale of ours that has a No. 1 brand in the portfolio but it’s not the No. 1 brand in its home market,” Stewart said of Fresh Squeezed. “It’s a large brand, but we haven’t really ever put a marketing campaign behind it.
“The Fresh family is the opportunity for us,” he continued.
So Deschutes is putting its marketing heft behind its Fresh portfolio, treating the line of IPAs as a “family” for the first time, Stewart explained. Supporting the Fresh family will be the “largest media campaign” Deschutes has ever put behind one of its brands.
Deschutes will actively market the Fresh portfolio as a family, Stewart said. The campaign will play out within the brewery’s top 11 markets, primarily via social and digital media, but also through billboards and point-of-sale items. Stewart added that the campaign can be customized by market and to relate to current events.
“We’re kind of coming out guns blazing here in the fall with our marketing,” Stewart said after admittedly being “a little bit quiet recently” during the pandemic.
That begins with a new campaign behind Deschutes’ Fresh family of IPAs, and continues with Pacific Northwest-focused partnerships, including becoming the “official craft beer” of the Pac-12 Conference and a line of apparel with Seattle-headquartered running shoe maker Brooks.
The timing of the launch is aimed at injecting energy into the Deschutes brand leading up to and immediately after its national sales meeting in September.
The campaign was devised after a series of consumer focus groups. The feedback from consumers: It’s all about the hops, Stewart said. Many consumers didn’t realize that hops came from the Pacific Northwest. Consumers liked the open-ended tagline “keep it fresh,” and they viewed Deschutes as “one of the O.G. experts of brewing beer with hops.”
“The summary of that research was that they liked the idea of IPAs that speak for themselves,” Stewart said.
And so Deschutes plans to give them just that, building the campaign around what they’re calling “spokes hops,” creating characters from the hops that adorn Deschutes’ packaging of its Fresh portfolio of IPAs.
Stewart stressed that making the hops “characters” doesn’t mean adding googly eyes, mouths or other human characteristics to the hops. Not at all. Each brand and hop will have its own personality and communicate through thought bubbles that look similar to text messages or social media DMs.
The goal is to speak with a more unified brand voice and reinforce that Deschutes is a leader in hoppy beers, while reaching younger, legal drinking age consumers. Fresh Squeezed and Fresh Haze, Deschutes’ top IPA brands, will be the centerpiece of the campaign, which can be customized to specific markets or moments in time. The campaign will extend to Squeezy Rider West Coast IPA, Lil’ Squeezy Juicy Pale, Royal Fresh Imperial IPA, and Hazetron Imperial Hazy IPA.
Hazetron (8% ABV) launched in Oregon earlier this year and will get a wider release in the fall and spring resets. That beer is about the future of hops and is brewed with Simcoe, Cryo Experimental 360 and Chinook.
Non-Alc Black Butte Porter, King Crispy Pilsner On the Way
Beyond the Fresh family, Deschutes will release a non-alcoholic version of its Black Butte Porter this fall in a limited geography and through direct-to-consumer sales.
“Our aspiration is that that’s a pretty big chain grocery play, and I think playing off of the equity of Black Butte Porter brings to a non-alcoholic brand,” Stewart said.
What the non-alc version of Black Butte delivers is a “beer-drinking experience in a non-alc version” and “the mental satisfaction of drinking a beer,” Stewart said.
“Black Butte NA is going to bring additional people to the beer aisle,” he added.
Additionally, Deschutes will release King Crispy Pilsner in wider distribution in the spring. King Crispy won the Bitburger Challenge, a competition among Pacific Northwest breweries to see who can brew the best German-style pilsner.
Deschutes On Track to Finish 2021 Up About 6%
Deschutes has “a really good shot to be up about 5% or 6%, year-over-year,” Stewart said.
“For us to do that, that means just delivering forecasts for the rest of the year,” he added.
Meanwhile, Deschutes’ draft beer volume is about 50% to 55% of where it was pre-COVID in 2019.
“I have aspirations of us getting closer to 70%, but that’s very dependent on macro trends,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot of the distribution back. But yeah, the volume is just a little bit slower and that’s because of traffic and restaurants not being open as late. That’s a hard fight.”
Boneyard Adds Distribution to Idaho
After making Boneyard Beer the first acquisition in the 32-year-old history of Deschutes Brewery, the company is expanding distribution of the brand to Idaho through Hayden Beverage. The focus for the brand will be on much of the same footprint as Deschutes: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, California and Nevada, Stewart said.
Stewart said the objective is to market Boneyard differently than Deschutes. In fact, Deschutes operates a separate Boneyard business unit led by Boneyard founder Tony Lawrence and others who have led the brand.
“They’re helping us make sure that we don’t change the marketing strategy too dramatically, and really disrupt everything that they’ve built because they’ve built a powerful brand,” Stewart said. “Our sales team is selling Boneyard, but they’re the keepers of the brand.”