Difficult Conversations & A Little More Action

📝 Editor Note 📝 

Hello and welcome back to this week’s Marketing Unfiltered.

This week we have Harry telling his personal story and whether BrewDog have lost its punk…🤘

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
Let us know what you think, hit reply or drop us a note on LinkedIn.

🤩 WOW what a great reaction to last week’s deep dive into the CMO title.
If you missed it, you can catch up by reading here

If you ever have any feedback or want to submit your take on anything Marketing or Growth, please get in touch [email protected] or send me a DM on LinkedIn

Thanks for reading again this week,

Danny Denhard - CMO coach, consultant, company advisor 

Difficult Conversations & A Little More Action

From BrewDog’s rebrand to teenage period pants and the camera that’s being sent up my backside this afternoon, great communication starts with honesty…

Let’s start with the elephant in the headline – said camera isn’t some recreational freakery or the least appealing OnlyFans account in history. 

I’m off for my 5 year colonoscopy, something I’ve done since I was 35 due to a prevalence in my close family, and everyone ought to do a free bowel cancer screening test from the age of 54, according to the NHS. 

For most, the screening test can be done from the comfort of your own home, and you can learn all about the process and whether you’re ‘higher risk’ on the amazing Cancer Research website. 

For the colonoscopy, it’s dead simple, as the leaflet in my pre-sent pack of laxatives eloquently informs me. Evacuate everything the night before, pop into the clinic, tick every box marked ‘pain relief’ or ‘sedation’ you can find (really, it’s for the best) and you’re done and out in a couple of hours.  

The language is sciencey without being confusing, the infographics are clear without being overtly icky and the preliminary phone calls and texts are pragmatic without being scary. 

It is a text box exercise in selling something unpleasant, potentially confusing but hugely necessary in a pragmatic, easy to follow way.

The thing is, we don’t talk about such things (especially us guys – we’re shit at it) which is why more open conversations are such lifesavers. 

Prostate and Bowel (Colorectal) cancers are respectively the first and third most common in men, so if you’re over 54, book in the ‘at home’ test tomorrow. If a close family member had one of the above and you’re over 40, book in a colonoscopy right now. 

Even the admin side isn’t a pain in the ass.

Communicating difficult subjects clearly has always intrigued me as both a marketer and writer. My favourite effort at cracking the genre was in this article for The Drum, where I explored the marcoms strategy deployed by period pants start up WUKA (aka ‘Wake Up, Kick Ass’ – still my favourite brand name acronym). 

Their entire approach was to normalise periods by showing them in all their bloody glory, thus mitigating any potential shame, worry or embarrassment girls may have historically felt when invaded by the Red army.

Wuka’s language and creative are simply honest, with an appropriately kick ass tone of voice, and as the father of a daughter, I’m delighted that as a society, we’ve collectively pulled our heads out of the conservative sand of Victorian era sensibility to be frank about something experienced by almost every girl every single month of their lives.   

Both the NHS and Wuka follow the same M.O. to communicate tricky subjects to a potentially nervous audience – they face it head on, culling unnecessary copy in favour of pragmatic, truthful and easy to understand language. Neither skirt around the less appealing elements of their task, and both ensure that it’s impossible to ignore the benefits of their offering. 

🤘Has BrewDog Lost Its Punk? 🤘 

They front up honestly and bravely - which brings us, belatedly, to BrewDog.

Regular readers of my articles and LinkedIn posts will know I’ve cultured an almost obsessive disdain for some of the Scottish brewer’s behaviour in the past, my apathy often directly attributed to their former CEO, James Watt.   

A couple of weeks ago, they cryptically teased something was up using images of the bottom of a can.

What eventuated was the announcement of a brand family brand refresh. Now, brand design is hugely subjective, so what’s sugar for me might taste like effluent to you, but almost universally the feedback to BrewDog’s upgraded packaging has been… underwhelming. 

Since 2007, BrewDog has positioned itself as a Zeitgeisty brand, a ‘F-you, establishment’ punk rocker dressed in a brewer’s jacket.

The problem they’ve always had is their own success – they’ve outgrown the teenage angst phase that allowed them to look and act like real punks, bursting through a $1 Billion in around 2017 so they began to look like your grandfather with a Mohican, aka a bit stupid.

Their new brand design refresh tries to give its leading products a new lease of individualism, but they ignored the ‘show, don’t tell’ rules of brand storytelling across all four beers:-

• Punk IPA – they’ve leant on (AKA shamelessly ripped off) the infamous album cover front from ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols’. Nothing says ‘conformist’ harder than plagiarism 

• Hazy Jane – ooh, you want a hippy vibe? I’ve got just the font – it’s all wavy, like a flag in the breeze. Groovy baby!

• Lost Lager – Original thought? Lost. Eye catching colour palette? Lost. Ability to differentiate from a can of Strongbow? Lost. Any redeeming design features? Also lost.

• Elvis Juice – the name, prompting thoughts of The King’s demise, always suggested the congealed fat that you get when you try to cook three packs of bacon in the same baking tray, only to forget about it and find it sitting, resembling the floor of a soap factory, several days later. Adding stripes to the can just makes it look like some kind of disruptive tomato soup. Or a new rival to Dandelion & Burdock. ‘Tomato and Disappointment’ – yep, that’s what it looks like.

I like BrewDog’s product – Punk IPA tastes decent, and I’d drink it at a party.
But I won’t buy it, in the same way I would never buy a Tesla or anything Nigel Farage has ever put his besmirched name to. I prefer Beavertown’s Neck Oil – the cans look cool, the brand is unsullied, and the beer is delicious.
I’d even choose ALDI’s own Anti Establishment IPA – a beer that is legitimately more punk than Punk IPA, if only in the sheer brass balls it has in ripping off BrewDog so flagrantly.

Despite all the CEO controversy and corporate Unicorn shilling, BrewDog still claim they bleed anarchy, but their new brand design, clearly fudged through committee and made beige through compromise, simply underlines how they now have to ask for permission to rebel, which leaves the brand looking woefully generic as a result.

Harry Lang is a CMO, founder of strategic brand and performance consultancy Brand Architects and author of ‘Brands, Bandwagons & Bullshit,’ available on Amazon.
You should get in touch with Harry at [email protected] 

» Harry’s latest post on LinkedIn breaks down his viral LinkedIn moments