The Independence Seal at Five
Source: Brewers Association
A bit more than five years ago, the Brewers Association launched a campaign to promote the independence of its members. They’re the trade association representing smaller American breweries, and following the massive spree of buyouts in the mid-teens, they responded with this campaign as a way of distinguishing their members from the products made by larger, corporate-owned breweries. They created a seal brewers could put on their products and marketing material to raise awareness among customers, who, presumably, would be persuaded to support local, mom-and-pop breweries if they could identify them. Noticing that we’d passed the five-year anniversary, I wondered: how is the campaign going?
Success With Breweries
When they unveiled the seal, everyone was a little shocked to see an upside-down bottle. The bottle, according to the BA, “captures the spirit of how craft brewers have upended the beer industry.” As metaphors went, it was fine, I guess—but the response was not great. It didn’t help that most of the industry would shift to cans over the next five years, making the seal, not far into its life, something of an anachronism. Despite all that, it provided members with a real, tangible value that most held dear. Most owners are proud of their businesses, and their independence is a big part of it.
Because of that, the roll-out was an immediate hit. Thousands of breweries signed up, and as packaging designs changed, more and more labels featured the symbol. It’s now routine to see it on shelves and on other marketing material. To date, over 5,700 breweries have signed up to use the seal, about two-thirds of the membership. And if you judge success by how irritated your competitors get, it succeeded on that score as well: AB InBev instantly issued a whiny video, and a year later, Pete Coors complained that the Brewers Association was “attempting to pit one part of the industry against another.” Clearly, independence was a concept that resonated with everyone, and the big breweries chafed at the attention it got.
In the years since the program started, most breweries have lined up to support it and seem satisfied with the initiative. Brewers Association economist Bart Watson recently surveyed breweries about the seal, with a sample of 500 responding. “We actually just asked about importance of the seal in our membership survey (conducted over the past month),” he write via email. “The question was ‘How important is the independent craft seal to your brewery?’ 86% of voting members indicated that the seal was somewhat to very important for their brewery.”
Ann Obenchain, Marketing and Communications director, added in a separate email that “about 2,000 breweries download our seasonal campaign asset toolkits that contain turnkey template social assets for them to customize for their social channels.” She also mentioned that the organization’s PR and Marketing Committee recently considered their post-pandemic strategy, and “we doubled down on the concept and importance of independence.”
Is it Landing with Customers?
Ultimately, there’s only one metric that really matters: is the seal driving customers to support member breweries? Five years ago, I argued that the first mark of success would be widespread member adoption—mission accomplished there—but the real test would be whether customers started making buying decisions based on whether a brewery was independent. By that measure, things aren’t as clear.
The “independent” campaign didn’t stop bereweries from selling out to corporate giants or coagulating into brands working under a single umbrella company. Just two of the largest erstwhile US “craft” breweries are still independent, with the recent notable losses of Bell’s and Stone. One of those two, Boston Beer, makes most of its money from non-beer beverages and began its own consolidation buy purchasing Dogfish Head.
We can’t know how small breweries might have been doing without the seal—things could easily be worse—but post-Covid hasn’t been a great time. Sales are flat, costs are up, and revenues are down. Beer in general has been lagging, but craft beer is no longer the bright segment in a declining category. In recent quarters, only imports seem to be bucking the trend—while craft tracks with other domestic categories.
And customers themselves? It’s hard to say. The Brewers Association hasn’t done any recent polling on the question—or made it public, anyway. I ran a Twitter poll, and found that independence does matter to respondents (n=675). Below are the responses to the question, “How would you characterize how much independence influences your buying decisions?”
19%. I only drink independent beer.
57%. Independence is important, but not the only factor.
15%. I don’t care much.
9%. It has no influence at all.
The good news is that three-quarters think about independence when they’re buying a beer. The bad news is the preferences of Beer Twitter are quite a bit different than the average American drinker. Without a true scientific poll, we can’t guess how much the seal campaign has moved the needle on customer thinking. Moreover, in comments to the poll, a number of people mentioned favoring local breweries, irrespective of their ownership. That may be a clue to the way people think about this issue. Ownership is really remote, but a local brewery is a tangible place with real people, and that matters to drinkers.
So where are we after five years? Brewery owners have a strong, pragmatic reason to care about marketing and messaging. They aren’t going to support something that doesn’t provide value. That so many have gotten on board with the independence seal suggests they see it as a net benefit. I don’t think anyone can argue it was a magic bullet, however. The fortunes of small, independent breweries are dimmer than they were a half-decade ago. It’s harder to operate a small business in 2022 than it was 2017. Factors like pandemics, changing consumer preferences, inflation, and supply chain issues are much more significant. People do care about independence (or local businesses), but hasn’t become the most potent force driving their buying choices.
The Brewers Association will continue with the program, and I’ll check back in another five years to see where we are.