Matt Tanaka helps breweries tell their story visually through eye-catching labels and websites.

You may have heard us drop Matt Tanaka’s name in our 3 Sheeps episode because his agency led their recent rebranding. In this episode, we sit down with Matt in the West Town studio of his newly christened Stout Collective to talk about establishing and juggling priorities in brewery marketing. 

Confirmation Bias

One big takeaway for us is that we’re not just talking out our asses when we say things like “tell your story,” “more people,” “think about your audience,” and especially, “stories, not ads.” Matt Tanaka has had these same conversations with his own clients and we had a great time comparing notes.

Not surprisingly, one of the big topics we came back to again and again, whether talking about labels, events, or email newsletters, was audience. Tanaka described how aligning brewer, story, and audience is key to rising above what he calls the “Geico-ification of beer,” that is, the appeal of the new and the slow race to the bottom for beer pricing.

Spontaneous is Not the Same as Authentic

The more important takeaway for our brewery, bar, and bottle shop audience concerns the difference between being spontaneous and being authentic. As Matt says, “You can only truly represent yourself if you spend time thinking about what you want to represent.”

In other words, your spontaneous content may or may not support your brand. Even if it does, it can only support it partially or haphazardly. 

“You can only truly represent yourself if you spend time thinking about what you want to represent.”

On the flip side, just because you placed a can of your beer on a rock by the lake and took a picture by yourself instead of paying someone to stage the picture and print it in a magazine, it doesn’t mean it’s not an ad.

Practically speaking, this means you need to have clearly described your brand and audience and then created a social media plan. Tanaka talks about defining brand priorities and separating content into “buckets” (a common content creation concept).

You’re always juggling priorities as a brewery, but a plan can help you identify what to prioritize when.

A few scenes from our afternoon with Matt Tanaka

Instagram Micro-Blogging: Social Media Trend of the Minute

One thing we were excited to ask Matt about was 3 Sheeps’ use of long captions on Instagram. This is an emerging trend that 3 Sheeps seems on the front end of. Tanaka talked us through how they sort of stumbled onto it and why he thinks it works.

At least, for now. This is something we think all breweries should look into, but as with any social media advice, you need to test it for your audience and tweak it until it works.

And expect things to change right around the time you feel like you’re nailing it.

Matt’s services overlap somewhat with ours, but think of us as consultants and as your in-house production crew once Matt has got you going with awesome packaging and a website. If you’d like to speak with us about getting more bang for your online marketing dollar, contact us.

Allusions, References, & Citations

Stout CollectiveBreakdown Deb Carey’s keynote at Craft Brewers Conference 2018Micro-blogging on InstagramJosh Noel, Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out

Beers

3 Sheeps Fresh Coast Juicy Pale Ale3 Sheeps The Wolf Barrel-Aged Imperial StoutRight Bee Cider Semi-DryBaderbrau Chicago Pilsner (beer rinse)