FRAME YOUR BRAND VALUES

Your brand’s core values are set in stone the moment you decide to open your brewery. There are many reasons you want to run your own business, brew the beer you want to brew and create the sort of experience you envision for your customers. An important step in the branding process is to clearly define these. 

Your brand values are a set of emotional and qualitative rules that set the stage for your entire business ecosystem. 

1. Why do you exist?
2. Who makes up your tribe? 
3. What do you stand for?

 It’s important to define these because they directly influence your brand essence, positioning, storytelling, and broad strategic decisions. They inspire your internal team, attract the best talent and get customers excited to support you (we all want to support companies we believe in).

Does this value influence how you work with your customers and other organizations outside your business? For example, do you regularly think about this value when establishing relationships with distributors or supporting local charities? What about the other business you work with, such as restaurants or farms—how is this value reflected in the way you work with them? 

It’s easy to be high and mighty when there’s no money on the line. How steadfast is this value? If a big enough opportunity comes around, can you be swayed from your position? If so, it may not really be a core value. 

Cut right to the heart of it

• Why are you starting your brewery? 
• Can you boil the reason down to one or two words?

At this point, you should be down to a pretty tight list. Now, take some time to write about what each of these values means to you—nothing crazy, maybe a paragraph or two. Why is “artistry” a core value? What does that mean to your brewery and why does it matter? Through this exercise, you may be able to rename these values to be more thematic, ownable and actionable. 

It probably goes without saying, but you have to actively live by these values for them to matter. If you pride yourself on making the best beer you can possibly brew, are you prepared to dump an entire batch of something that doesn’t meet your standards? Are you willing to lose money in order to stand behind your values?
It’s important for your entire team, up and down the chain, to understand, and live by these values. We’ll get into this a bit more when we discuss how to shape your brewery’s culture. 

There are some words that many businesses like to use to describe themselves, “ethical,” “trusted” and “quality” being some of the most common. While there’s nothing wrong with these concepts, they shouldn’t have to be said. Of course, you should run your business ethically. But this idea doesn’t help you stand out from other breweries. Strive to stand for something that’s unique to your team—something that truly differentiates you from your competition. 

A lot of companies taken through this process have tried to create a “perfect storybook” image of themselves. “They make the best beer and treat everyone perfectly, and we recycle, and we change the oil in our car every 3,000 miles, and we always remember to call our mom on her birthday, and we help old ladies cross the street...” You get the picture.
It’s important to tell the real story, your story. You need to look inward and define the values that you live by, even if they’re different from what the rest of the world expects. You can’t be perfect, so just be yourself and trust that you’ll attract the right people. 

A fantastic place to begin framing your values is to understand your “Why.” Simon Sinek familiarized this concept in his fantastic book, “Start with Why.” (if you’re not the reading type, you can also find a great TED Talk on this subject). Sinek says that there are three layers to your story—the What, the How, and the Why. Most breweries land somewhere between the What and the How as far as their marketing is concerned, but the Why is what draws people in and creates a deep emotional connection (assuming you brew great beer of course). This directly informs your positioning and the role you play in your community and market.