Audience is the starting point of good marketing, and 3 Sheeps Brewing in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, is working hard to connect their passion to their local community.

For this episode, Brad had the opportunity to interview his friend and colleague Matt Tanaka, whose visual branding agency was contracted by 3 Sheeps’ for their latest rebranding. Matt provided great insight into how understanding audience led so many of their creative decisions.

3 Sheeps distributes throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Chicagoland, but their core audience lives in and around the Sheboygan area. That’s a largely working and middle class audience, so it became important not to get too esoteric.

When your tagline is “Brewed with Heart & Science” and you’re led by Grant Pauley, who Matt Tanaka calls an “intellectual brewer,” losing your audience in the weeds of the details is a real possibility. Not that you need to talk down to your audience, but you definitely shouldn’t talk over their heads.

Brad shares how Pauley and Tanaka tackled this issue with Cashmere Hammer Nitro Stout, a stout brewed with rye and wheat and packaged via a process that took 18 mos. to research and perfect. 

3 Sheeps seems to be killing it as far as getting people to gather in the tap room. Mike pontificates on the idea that “breweries are business cards for towns” and how 3 Sheeps is repping Sheboygan well, and we briefly discuss how communities are and are not taking advantage of their built-in tourist magnets.

We look at how well they’re doing, by comparison, online. While we see good things there, too, we also see several opportunities to give their audience more story content.

That said, we do hold up 3 Sheeps as a great model of using Instagram to microblog. This is a newish trend on Instagram in which you write a lengthy caption, sometimes running several paragraphs, telling a quick story about your photo. You may or may not have a link to another page, but the post doesn’t require the audience to click through anywhere to get the gist.

3 Sheeps has been playing around with this and is certainly leading the curve for breweries. It’s also a good example of our repeated refrain that you must treat Instagram and Twitter differently.

Finally, at the top of the episode you’ll hear us enter the Pour Hard vs. Pour Gentle debate, invoking none other than homebrew and brand guru Randy Mosher.

As always, if you’d like to learn more about how we can help you tell your story, contact us.