Nick Mallory - Leading Marketing for a 15-Brand Bev-Alc PE Portfolio

On this episode, we’re joined by Nick Mallory, VP of Marketing at Ackley Brands, the Pacific Northwest, family-owned beverage platform behind a growing portfolio of wine and beer brands (15 as of now).

Nick breaks down Ackley’s origin story and roll-up thesis, the decision framework for what makes a great fit, and the first-90-days playbook once a brand joins the family. We dig into “thin slicing” markets (how small is small enough), how to organize shared services vs. brand-dedicated teams, and what his marketing/creative org actually looks like.

From there, we get tactical: agency due diligence, shifting from big-budget playbooks to smaller-brand realities, and his empathy-first brand development approach (“VBBP”). We also cover “know your coloring box” (constraints that enable creativity) and how to approach refresh vs. rebrand decisions. We finish with Costco realities, the state of hemp beverages, and how Nick thinks about “share of throat” and “share of buzz".

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 Episode Highlights:

🍷 Ackley’s origin story and portfolio strategy
🧭 The post-acquisition playbook, first-90 days from audit to activation
🔬 “Thin slicing” your market
🏗️ Shared services vs. brand-specific teams across a portfolio
🎨 Inside the Ackley marketing & creative org
🤝 Agency due diligence
📉 Moving from big brands to small brands
💛 Empathy-first brand development (“VBBP”)
🖍️ “Know your coloring box”
🛒 Shopper & retail tactics that translate to velocity (pack, promo, POS)
🧺 Costco
🌿 Hemp beverages
📣 “Share of throat” and “share of buzz”

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Table of Contents:

00:47:13 – Ackley origin story and portfolio strategy/overview
03:55:18 – What determines if a brand is a good fit for the portfolio?
06:43:14 – The post-acquisition playbook
09:35:27 – “Thin slicing” your market, context switching
13:48:19 – Shared services vs brand-specific org across a portfolio
15:47:18 – The Ackley Brands marketing and creative org
17:50:00 – Nick’s agency due diligence process
18:49:10 – Shifting from bigger brands to smaller brands
25:28:20 – Empathy-first brand development, “VBBP”
30:04:03 – “Know your coloring box”
32:25:16 – Brand refreshes, questions to ask
36:16:02 – Rebrands: balancing the new and the old
39:25:14 – Shopper and retail marketing tactics
41:41:10 – Costco
45:19:09 – Hemp beverages
47:08:07 – “Share of throat” and “share of buzz”

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Links:

Ackley Brands – https://www.ackleybrands.com
Follow Nick on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmallory/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/
 

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.

Transcript

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today we're speaking with Nick Mallory VP of VP of marketing at Acme Brands which is a family owned PE group based out of the Pacific Northwest that owns a portfolio of a number of different beverage brands which we're gonna dive into here in just a second prior to the leading marketing actually Nick Green marketing for well known craft beer brands like Alishan Brewing Rogue Ales they go now to Portland I know well among others so definitely excited to get into it um but yeah just first off just for the listeners Nick maybe just uh the kind of level set people that aren't as familiar with the ACTLY portfolio maybe just give us kind of quick lay of the land in terms of maybe origin story how the group got started all the different kind of key add ons along the way and maybe what the current portfolio looks like today and then I will go from there yeah so Ackley Brands is a subset of Ackley Capital like you said a family owned private equity company up here in the Seattle sort of Puget Sound area multi general general multi generation Seattle family they've been around here for ever you know grandpa's grandpa's grandpa kind of a thing and they started Acley Capital in 2016 uh Jay Acley son Brandon Acley started Acley Brands which was originally conceived as Acley Beverage Group but then switched over to Acley Brands they started purchasing brands in the wine space with Montana or estates out of good Old Forest Grove Oregon and then have grown it pretty consistently since then with the last 18 months being a considerable period of growth currently there's about 15 brands under management thirteen of those are in the wine space two craft breweries Silver City out of Bremerton Washington and then a good old Mac and Jack's a long held staple in the Seattle in greater Washington area for about 30+ years is under management as well I came on with the company about a year ago like you said from a long career in craft beer to lead the marketing efforts as ACLY brand started to grow pretty considerably and yeah it's been a wild ride super fun it's been awesome getting into the wine business certainly coming from a career in craft beer some similarities some quasi similarities and some like oh my gosh this is completely different kind of stuff but but a great ride great company great people so it's been it's been super fun for the last year the legacy component is a big part of how we view the brands in our portfolio you know like I said multi generational Pacific Northwest Seattle based family so obviously brands in our backyard that have been around for a long time matter a lot to us and just making sure that those brands can carry on for another 30 years you know Silver City started in 96 Mac and Jack's 93 you've got Montana that's been around for forever Hogue wines in the portfolio is a I mean gosh a staple in the northwest the winery um essentially started the wine industry in Washington back in 1962 believe it or not I can't even imagine what the wine business was like in 62 so there there are brands with a ton of legacy here and a ton of opportunity to carry on I would say for the next multiple decades some of these brands have changed hands through you know big giant players in the industry which we've all heard about the constellations and Gallo Wine Group and stuff like that but through Covid I think there was a real opportunity to come in and help Shepherd these brands and steward these brands for another you know multi decade run of growth and prosperity and and really that's kind of been the goal of ACLY a little bit different I guess than sort of your tried and true dyed in the wool PE group which is you know a little bit more focused on profitability and turn around and that kind of stuff we tend to take a long lens approach to these brands which I think given the current climate of alcobev is is a solid way to look at it for sure yeah beyond just that legacy component really define a brand as a good fit for the athlete portfolio yeah it's a it's a it's a great question and I think overall when you're looking to work on something and build something and and steward it forward now speaking purely from a marketing perspective you know like any good marketer I try to stay away from the numbers as much as I can I mean that's not completely true right we're always looking at numbers and metrics I got my degree in finance or finance depending upon where in the country you're from so sometimes I can I can screw around with a spreadsheet you know as well as anybody else I guess but one of the things you're looking for is you know what has the brand tried in the past has the has the brand tried everything under the sun is the brand super well codified is the brand you know does the brand have a really strong brand proposition and it's just kind of on the other side of that brand bell curve or are there a ton of stuff that haven't been tried is there low hanging fruit is there stuff that we can come in and build and develop you know if if you've had a brand you know if if Nike God forbid you know I graduated from the UFO so I can't speak ill of Nike in any way but if if Nike God forbid started fledgling and really dying you know you'd be hard pressed to come up with any like serious new ideas necessarily because the brand has been developed for so long and everything's kind of been tried and tested and but with a brand where you know there's a bunch of low hanging fruit and not much has been tried I think there's real opportunity there to to do some stuff and help Shepherd it moving forward into the into the future it's it's a curious thing to me and it's always been fascinating to me being in the alcove space is that save for a handful a really small handful of big players there's not a lot of marketing teams in the industry if there are they're typically teams of one or two and and you know sometimes there's someone that worked at one of the pubs or worked at one of the tasting rooms that you know has the Adobe Creative Suite and knows how to fire up illustrator and so there's not a lot of like really big marketing teams in the industry again outside of of some big giant players and so a lot of these brands they haven't necessarily had a huge amount of marketing effort behind them so there's real opportunity there to build something again that can go for the next 30+ years and and the great news with these brands is you're walking into it with a tremendous amount of brand equity a tremendous amount of visibility and awareness that sort of if you want to get marketing 1 0 1 nerdy with it that top of the funnel is really full you know folks know the name they know the labels they know you know what it looks like on shelf so a lot of a lot of good building blocks to work with and just a lot of low hanging fruit to to take and run with yeah do you have somewhat of a standardized you know I don't know six months to a year after acquiring the brand getting it to a a place that you guys are happy with or things that you typically work on yeah I mean I I you know it's funny I think I think brands are a lot like kids you know I have I have three kids 17 15 and 13 and they're all different right uh they all have vastly different personalities and are into vastly different things and and brands are kind of the same way you know um and you sort of have to treat each one as its own kind of free Wheeling entity you know this brand is really well known so we don't necessarily have to worry about top of funnel activities this brand is all about pushing at retail or you know this brand has a really great personality and it really has the kernels of a voice but maybe it hasn't been really kind of investigated in a big way or delineated and and codified and described in a big way so let's lean let's lean into that um you know this brand's got a great history but it doesn't really show up anywhere let's let's talk about the history and the legacy of this brand more so each one is super different I think you know starting off taking the brand and just kind of saying okay what do we have here what do we know at rogue we used to do this exercise I talk about rogue a lot because it was my first job in beer I got to work with Jack Joyce the founder really closely and his son Brett Joyce the president and it's kind of the proverbial they taught me everything I knew kind of place I I adored my time there I was there for about five years and Jack used to always talk about a what do we have and what do we need list so let's write down what we've got and that's everything from the name the logo a package a beer and then what do we need you know we need the story delivered or we need a press release or we need you know this that or the other thing and that's really kind of where we start with these brands what do we have what do we need and like I said every single one of them is is different some of them are very readily apparent you know you take a brand like Columbia Winery which has been around since 1962 it predates a lot of the big players in Washington state wine by about three or four years it was started by a handful of dub professors and as an Oregon guy which is staunchly against the university of Washington it kills me to you know say that but it's true U Dub they created Columbia Winery and they essentially put in a lot of ways the area on the map so it's like okay well how does that show up and that's a huge legacy and let's lean into that and how do we develop that versus going another track so really it is kind of a bespoke process yeah for each one yeah I've heard you talk about something along the lines of thin slicing your market and and really niching down and obviously you've got you said you know 13 15 brands in the portfolio assuming you apply that similar approach and each brand has a pretty distinct audience message and and the way they're positioned I'm just kind of curious cause but I know you know your team is isn't huge it's kind of like a shared services across the portfolio like how how do you and your team do so much switching back and forth between the brands so often do that so effectively yeah I mean that's the uh that's the real secret sauce I guess of the job is that you're constantly pivoting you're constantly kind of going from from one brand to another putting on different hats and it's you know it's it's a lot to kind of keep straight I think you know this is gonna sound a little remedial but prioritization goes a long way and and being able to segment and prioritize where the brands are you know this brand is a major national player we've got a voice that can be really developed we've got a voice that's really unique that's a high priority you know this brand is still in development if we're really honest with ourselves there's some work to do on the brand and on the proposition but our wholesaler network and our retailer network really likes it or they're at least attracted to it let's kind of put that in the second up position you know and on and on and on and on you know this brand has a unique opportunity let's put it up high this brand boy still a lot of work to do there if we're honest let's put it over here so I think it starts with kind of segmenting amount the two big things that we're always looking for with a brand in the alcohol space and I I mean I would say this for a brand probably across CPG categorically who's the customer what do they want you know what are those tensions what are those benefits and how do we lean into those and and on what spectrum does that still need to be developed so like okay we've got this brand really great but we don't quite yet know who the customer is we need to really develop that maybe there isn't a big geographic opportunity for this brand so that's a whatever you want to call it a level 2 a parking lot a back burner you know this one has real opportunity sales team is fired up about it our networks are fired up about it okay that's a bigger priority so that's really where it where it starts and kind of creating that three to five year plan of okay we get the priorities rolling then the priority shift we bring new ones up to the fold and away we go and it it took a while to kind of get to that place of where you know certainly from a from you know the division leader the team leader kind of getting everybody on the same page is like we can't touch everything so let's make sure that we get really good at prioritizing and it's wild because when you come into an environment like that it was a huge lesson I had to learn I mean I've been in the industry for a while and it was a huge lesson I Learned early on is that everywhere you look is opportunity every single brand you've got the you know what we should do on repeat in your head and if you try to grab all of that opportunity you'll you'll lose it all I tell this story all the time it was a story I Learned at rogue Jack Joyce told it to me I'll never forget it he's like okay imagine you're a marketer you're standing in a river and the river is passing through your legs you can't look down river and you can't look up river behind you you can only look straight down between your legs and there are just tons of fish going between your legs and as a marketer you need to get really good at going that one and that one and that one and letting all the other fish pass through because if you try to catch all the fish they'll just spill out of your hands and I think that that's something that that you can do whether you work for a private equity company that has 15 brands under management or you're working just with one brand or you're working at an agency or you're advising on a brand is get really good at which fish to catch rather than trying to catch them all cause you can't catch them all you know yeah even at even at Anheuser Busch when they got floors of people on the marketing team they still can't catch them all so anyway have you guys ever thought about trying to be a bit more I've been a bit more of a siloed approach whether it's through agencies or in house people where you have you know one person only owns this brand this person only owns this brand at all yeah I mean it's it's it's a great question one of the companies I worked at one of my favorite companies I worked at in beer was Craft Brew Alliance out of out of Portland they owned Widmer Brothers they were at the Widmer Brothers brewery there on the east side of Portland Red Hook long time Seattle brand Kona out in Hawaii it was an awesome company to work for and the way they were structured is every single brand had a brand team and it was a small brand team it was typically you know two to three people Kona being the bigger brand had a bigger brand team and then they would work with a smattering of agencies and sometimes the agencies were shared sometimes they weren't and then Craft Brew Alliance itself had a really big shared services cadre everything from data pulling analytics to they had shared production designers they had shared project managers that would work across the all of the other brands and I really liked that model I liked having brand teams that were focused on just one brand I think eventually wanting to potentially get to that place is is a great like long lens approach I think for now when you're looking at you know just trying to figure out what we have in front of us and how do we you know push some of these brands forward and and continually define them you know I I think that at this point you're just trying to wrap your hands around the the whole universe but we're you know we're going that direction we have folks that are focused on if not a brand but maybe a like a subset of brands and then we've got folks that are working on like trade activations and design across those brands and stuff like that so trying to start building that of course at CBA it was a lot further down the road and how they were developed but it was always a great model I I I loved working there for sure yeah and that's looking at both FTE's as well as you know core agencies or I don't know freelancers look like to support the organ and all those different brands and businesses under the portfolio yeah so we have you know I'm the VP of marketing and I oversee sort of how all the brands come together in strategy but you know like like any other like any other company where you're you're trying to wrap your hands around all this I say this all the time to the team you know we're kind of a pirate ship right so one day I might be steering the boat the next day I might be swabbing the deck and you know I might be working on a layout for a label one day and then charting a five year plan the next day so I always love that about being in craft beer is that it really was kind of this us against the world sort of mentality which which is really fun in in this business but you know I'm I'm sort of charting strategy for the broader team and marketing and the portfolio um then we've got some marketing directors and brand managers underneath me that are handling groups of brands and then we have a handful of shared services folks in trade and production design and content and then it's on to agency partners you know we've got a couple of agency partners that help us with packaging and you know retail POS and in store promotion you know I think the good thing about the agency world and the contract world is that contract world probably more than agency it's easy to kind of scale up and scale down or I shouldn't say easy it's simple to scale simple not easy right to scale up and scale down but I've got a long history of working with agencies and and how well that can work together with brand teams so we're we're pretty careful on how we choose but you know I'll tell you what if you find the right partners out there it it makes the work you know what do they say many hands make light work right is the phrase yeah but yeah you know and then the idea is let's continue to grow the team as brand priority shift and as you know executions get bigger and you know that's I think that's always the the goal moving forward yup you kind of like agency due diligence process look like I think you know you're always it's such a great question you're always looking at the at the work right like the work is the is the big shiny you know the work is the stone in the wedding ring right like everybody's always looking at the stone even if the rest of the ring is really great you're always looking at the stone um but it's also how well does the agency understand our business how well does it understand wine how well does it understand beer and also how well does it understand what we're trying to do you know and where we're trying to go and how well does it understand that we're still trying to figure some of that stuff out and if we can work with agencies that really understand us and where we're coming from and have you know a fairly solid hold on how the business works and some of the crazy nuances to this business then you know that's a that's a killer opportunity or or potentially someone we'd want to we'd want to connect with yep I think they're under Abinbev Rogue is pretty big too I'm curious as you made that shift for some of those bigger brands into this you know portfolio of smaller ones what was I don't know the biggest surprise after making that shift yeah boy so I started it at rogue um in in Portland and like like I said I mean the the brand that started it all and I owe Jack and Brett Joyce probably my entire career frankly don't tell him I said that ha ha ha you know Rogue Rogue was great it wasn't wasn't like massive massive world beating volume but it was crazy geographic spread you know rogue was in like 20 something countries when I was there it was all across the country there's also a brand that everybody knew and connected with I mean these are ex Nike guys that started rogue and we're talking like signing Michael Jordan era Nike guys Peter Moore was on the board of directors at rogue he designed the first Air Jordan so imagine being a marketing guy and you're like presenting at a board meeting to him it's most terrified I've ever been in my life but you know they were they were small medium ish volume wise but big giant spread then you go to CBA Craft Brew Alliance with Widmer I ran the Widmer brand which was huge legacy brand everybody knew relatively medium ish I would say in the beer business small media medium ish but then I transitioned over to Kona which was the juggernaut at CBA and we were when I was at CBA we were 30 I it's some crazy number it's like 34.7% owned by AB so we had visibility to the AB network craft breweries ended up becoming fully bought out by AB and then it was off to alusion and alusion is large craft brewery you know 315,000 barrels of beer which is pretty significant in the beer industry but of course you're owned by um the mothership AB Inbev which was a an absolutely fascinating look into that level of the beer business I I worked with a guy really early on in my career at Rogue a Tiny Irwin everybody knows this guy tiny who is himself not tiny of course but I remember him saying to me it sticks out you know he worked at Molson Coors for like 15 years or something and he said you know in craft you guys don't know how big big is and so it was interesting to work with AB and to see how big big is and holy cow is it big and then from there I worked with I worked at Bone Yard I took a little sojourn to Bone Yard Beer which is in bend owned by Deschutes Deschutes is pretty big but Bone Yard was like Bone Yard is what you fall in love with with craft beer I mean everything from the people the founder Tony Lawrence is like just one of the best guys in the world the beers incredible the brand is amazing and super tiny and scrappy and wonderful and just everything you love about craft beer and so the the big transition first and foremost is always scale right the the scale of Anheuser Busch and the scale of what you can do is staggering um you know I use the analogy of like imagine Adam I told you you know I want you to go buy a car and you have to go out and buy a car right but you have an unlimited budget you can spend however much money you want well god you'd be like do I get a Bugatti do I get a Rolls Royce SUV do I get a Honda Civic like what do I get I can get anything well then I tell you go buy a car you got 15 grand well now all of a sudden the world kind of makes a little bit more sense working with Anheuser Bush and the Anheuser Bush network to some degree is like buying a car with an unlimited budget and the wonderfulness of it is that they really pushed you to think in huge ideas like way bigger than you could ever think and it was kind of startling what could get done at that level if the idea was big enough what it looked like when the whole organization would galvanize behind an idea but you know what the world for a lot of companies doesn't necessarily work like that so it I've been really fortunate to have both sides of that experience you know it is small and scrappy and pirate shipy and you against the world and you're doing a million different things and it's amazing to work for a small brand you know you're all about the brand you're all about like getting people to fall in love with the brand and I think that's amazing work for a marketer to get really good at the flip side of a big brand is you're much more data focused you're much more KPI focused and numbers focused which is also a big component of marketing right it's a big component of the work that we do and it's awesome to have that experience in that lens too of like portfolio white spaces and what does the category look like and velocity numbers and you know impressions and doing consumer research on packaging and eye chart maps and all that kind of stuff is is super awesome and part of what we do so uh you know obviously I think scales a big difference resources are obviously a big difference you know and then you go from pirate ship to luxury cruise liner is also can be a little different so I mean but both awesome experiences for sure now that's really helpful for someone that's in in the process about to make a move from either big to small or or small to big yeah I mean if if if I was sorry to you know maybe to answer your question a little bit better if I was moving from big to small I would be ready to get my hands in a million different pots I'd be ready to get in the trenches I'm working on stuff I'm building stuff I'm I used to work with this guy this is such a great way to put it Dawn Kelly at rogue he would talk about head up versus head down work when you're high up in an organization you're head up you're looking down you're you're strategizing you're looking down the road when you're when you're a newbie or kind of new onto a team you're head down you're working on projects if you go to a big organization you tend to be more head up if you go to a small organization that head starts to drop and you're into tasks so that would be the big difference and I've seen marketers struggle with it both ways I've seen people at small brands who are used to being down getting stuff done then going to a larger company where they're more strategy focused and it's like I don't feel like I'm doing anything cause my hands aren't in the work and then the flip side of that too you know I'm just used to being in meetings and writing on whiteboards and now I gotta you know put pen to paper and that can be kind of tough too so sorry sorry to cut you off there but no that's good no that's that's super helpful it sounds like there's a lot of yeah contact switching and you don't either way can be a fun experience but you just gotta be mentally prepared and understand what you're walking into basically right right for sure for sure yeah shifting gears a bit just talking about visual identity brand packaging design that big bucket I've heard you talk about that you really focus on empathy first brand development meaning brand should really focus on getting a really deep understanding of of their core consumer their pain points before building that brand identity and can you just maybe speak to this approach a bit more maybe how this works in terms of actually in terms of where you guys are already acquiring brands maybe you're you know refreshing updating the brands you do a big deep dive on those customer pain points really understanding the customers part of that acquisition process yeah I'm kind of curious how the how you think about this in general how it applies to actually specifically yeah it's a it's a great question and I I talk to folks about this all the time and especially folks outside of the CPG industry everybody everybody I don't mean to generalize but a lot of folks when they think about packaging or a brand or marketing they're super quick to go right to the visual what does the logo look like what are the colors look like what does the font look like and I think that that's kind of the natural inclination of most folks because you're just surrounded with that stuff all the time and you know well I like this particular kind of thing you know I really like Nike right so I'm gonna make my brand look like Nike and everybody again not to generalize most folks kind of tend to race towards that you know hey let's work on your marketing and branding okay what does the logo look like well hold on a second you know and that hold on a second is where the real work the hard work and in my opinion the most important work begins it's building that foundation that no consumer will ever see no one will probably ever see it written down unless you're a huge nerd and you love buying books on branding and style guidelines and all that stuff but it is so foundational to how your brand performs out in the market at Anheuser Busch they called this and I can never say this acronym without sounding marble mouthed the V B B P the value based brand proposition I call it in my work the Brand Blueprint it's coming up with those essential mission vision values for your brand what do we care about what are we trying to say what do we look like what do we feel like what do we sound like you know why do we exist I think for a lot of people the mission statement sounds like such a piece of BS marketing fluff and you know what frankly not to speak ill of my own kind to some degree it kind of is but it also can be a North Star for the brand you know Nike's mission statement you know to bring inspiration and innovation to athletes around the world and if you have a body you're an athlete right like famous mission statement they never talk about shoes they never talk about sports they talk about inspiration and innovation and with that mission statement it tells you exactly where you should go as a brand it tells you what your logo should look like what your color should look like you know how you should talk how you should connect with your consumers and so many brands in my opinion forget that step so when we're working on a packaging project I like focusing on that stuff and making sure that that brand proposition is dialed in we just got wrapped up we just finished a a refresh and a rebrand project for one of the brands in the Acme portfolio and we've been working on it for 10 months and I've done these projects all throughout my career this was the hardest one I've ever done and it's because in the beginning we were just trying to get the packaging done but we didn't realize until you know a couple of months ago like whoa okay hold on let's take a big step back we need to build this brand we need to codify and build the foundation and it wasn't until we did that that the project sword and took off in a in a big way um and I that's kind of I guess what is meant by an empathy leaning brand is that you care about you care about what you care about and you care about what you care about and how that connects and impacts with the consumer some brands do it really intuitively like rogue where it wasn't necessarily written down but the rogue when I was there holy cow was it making a statement and that statement came through loud and clear other brands I think it needs to be built out and developed but super super super important when you're considering it's it's so funny to be like when you're considering a packaging project step 1 don't think about the packaging think about the brand and the consumer and how you connect with them hey I've heard you say something along the lines of of know your Coloring Box yeah so this is you know you really gotta know your brand and you gotta know what you're trying to say and what you're trying to do we I worked on a project I'm gonna I'm gonna try to say this without calling out the project and specifically but we worked at a project on a project one of the other brands I was I was working on and and there was someone real close to the brand that was pushing a look and a feel for this it was a beer brand of course for one of these beers that just didn't align with what the beer was it didn't align with what we were trying to say with the beer the beer was this really light easy drinking it was it was a Nordic style beer so it had like a big body to it but it was super easy drinking we had tested it out in the local market and people loved it and then when it came time to do the packaging we were really getting leaned on for this this look and this feel that was completely antithetical to what the beer was the beer was light approachable super good big body and the branding was like dark edgy firm you know hard edges kind of like a Hard Rock brand and it just failed at retail because we didn't know the coloring box like you know the coloring box was over here and we were trying to go over here now what's funny about that is that the direction that we were going towards that packaging was in line with the overall company brand if you if if somebody told you about it you would be like yeah that's perfectly in line with the brand but it wasn't in line with the product that we were trying to launch for that brand so it was like okay how do we do service to that product in the style of the brand rather than just we're making a package that fits with the brand and again it it it looked killer it looked killer it was awesome but it just you know hit the market like a thud and I'll never forget it because good Lord was the beer incredible like incredible and it was I just felt like it was such a failing not to do service to that to that beer so that's kind of an example of like you know losing sight of your coloring box yeah I run a brand I run marketing at a at a brand told you we're considering a packaging refresh yet what kind of questions like might you ask me to help me determine even if this is the right strategy in the first place yeah I mean good good Lord uh it's funny because that's always a brand refresh I think to a lot of folks in the industry is like the answer to all of your problems right like everybody thinks it's the answer to all of your problems oh sales are flagging like let's do a brand refresh or you know this is waiting let's do a let's do a brand refresh and in a weird sort of way sometimes doing a brand refresh can be like you know the proverbial using a sledgehammer to kill a fly right like it's like okay but that's that's a pretty big deal like you're you're kind of rewriting how the brand shows up out there in the market like let's have you know question number one why and that why can't be well because numbers are down that it it has to be something bigger than that it has to be you know we're not telling the story correctly it doesn't align with our mission vision values the brand isn't who we are we're going a direction or we're changing directions that this brand isn't servicing us anymore like we're not this brand doesn't connect with our consumer tensions anymore it can't just be because we don't have any other good ideas right and I would really caution if anybody's coming to me and they're like hey we're considering a brand refresh you know could you come talk to us about it first question is why are we doing this like and I'll tell you what in my experience nine times out of 10 it's because somebody in the organization doesn't like the color of the thing or I don't like how that font looks and you're like okay well you know great but maybe it's not for you you know I I just think having those questions are super super important and then you know after you answer that why and you have your your your mission your vision you know what the brand is about you know inspiration and innovation right like okay this new idea for Nike does it convey inspiration and innovation is it inspiring is it innovative yes no okay great right one of my favorite mission statements is Red Bulls to give wings to people and ideas they don't talk about sugar water they don't talk about energy drink that's how a brand can own an F1 company right so like is this new thing that we're coming up with is that giving wings to people and ideas like that's great okay great then then rebrand or is this doing a better job of showcasing giving wings to people in it great right but to do a refresh just because well it looks old it's like you know tell paps Blue Ribbon that it looks old right like come on so anyway that that's kind of that's where I would where I would start and again not to not to do a callback like a comedian but that's why that mission vision value stuff that foundational work is so important because you can lean back on it you can go oh well hold on a second like like this brand that we were doing this this brand refresh that took months and months and months to do one of the partners that we worked with on it is amazing amazing they do amazing work I mean like I could not speak higher about their work but the work that they were doing for the brand ultimately just did not align with what the brand was we were trying to make the brand too edgy and too cool and too you know it's just not that kind of brand it's a legacy brand it's a you know it's a brand that you remember for years that everybody fell in love with like it's just not that vibe so that's where I'd start with the with yeah there's a there's a brand refresh there's a reason for it you want to have some sort of fresh look to a certain extent but how do you think about that while balancing the need to have you know keeping some level of that familiar legacy brand elements for those existing customers that I mean it's the simplest brand when they're walking down the aisle making sure they can still recognize it and but beyond that still feel like it's something that they resonate with and feels familiar boy I mean now I feel like you had a microphone and a recorder on me during all of these meetings cause this is exactly what you're you know it's exactly what we're talking about right is is okay so we're refreshing a brand that people are aware of how do we keep enough of the brand to where people who are currently in love with it still recognize it and they don't feel alienated and then how do we newify or freshen the brand enough for new customers to go oh that's pretty cool right you know you start off by by really landing on what's important about the brand what do people look at what do people recognize you know there was a a brand refresh that we were working on for Mac and Jack's which has been around for forever which you know is a long time on premise draft beer that I mean if you're in the Pacific Northwest in any way you know Mac and jacks but it's like OK well what are people connecting with there's a lion on the label but that lion has a specific story so how does that lion show up when people go into a bar or a restaurant they say I'll have a Mac and jacks not all have a amber ale or not all have an IPA so what do we do with that the tap handle is really iconic and recognizable so what do we do about that so as you're refreshing the brand you're like okay we know we need Lion we know we need Mac and Jack's as a wordmark as a phrase and we know the tap handle is important how do we incorporate that in where we're going and how do we do something different while paying homage to what it was and I think that's really like the hard work to be done is okay we've earmarked what's important so step 1 for me would be like earmark what's important with the brand that you're looking to refresh what are those components of it whether it's a font that's recognizable a color that's recognizable an icon or an Avatar that's recognizable a phrase that's recognizable with the brand you know and then how can we convey that forward there's a there's a beer brand in Seattle which is a wonderful brand they make amazing beer they're called Ruben's Bruise and the brand is named after the owner's kid and they have this stylized lowercase r you know like the old school cursive r is like their main logo and it's like if they refresh the brand but got rid of the R I think that they would completely be lost on the shelf but what they do is they refresh the brand and the R becomes even more prominent because they know that that's what's people that's what people notice on shelf so again really focus on what those like key important markers are to your consumers and making sure that those are conveyed in some way shape and form they can be tweaked great but you wanna make sure that that connection stays true yep totally that's all really helpful getting a bit more tactical in terms of retail shopper marketing tactics maybe especially on the you know the craft beer and wine space which you guys play in well what what are the the core tools that you found a brand should have in their tool belt to is one to you know to pitch buyers but more like to really achieve like what's the main stuff that you guys focus on that you feel like has has the biggest impact yeah um like my you know this this poor guy use his name all the time my business law professor Mark Phelps at university of Oregon he said the answer to every question in business law is it depends and so my my answer to this question is well it depends you know what what should we have in our in our arsenal I think we should be able to produce most if not everything that a retailer or a partner would ask for what is in the arsenal I think that depends on channel you know obviously a C store will be more into cooler clings because the coolers are a big part of their business you know you wouldn't necessarily use those across grocery in a big way you know on premise certainly for the beer world for the wine world um has a different set of stuff altogether you know beer tends to be more merch and asset focused wine tends to be more equipment focused you know wine keys bottle cap that kind of stuff so it really depends I think on what the retailer is asking for and looking for I think being able to produce a wide array of asset items for your brand is super important can you go down to sweeps and rebates and that kind of stuff that a grocery store will really love can you do you know in house poster promotions which an on premise will really love coasters pints wine keys that kind of stuff you know again being able to manage that array of items it's a lot more I think I think people don't realize that it's a lot more than just having a really killer graphic design on designer on staff you know sourcing and procuring and producing and warehousing and fulfilling like that stuff becomes kind of a logistical I don't wanna say nightmare but like a logistical not a great dream sometimes yeah yeah yeah at Costco at least some of the brands now Costco is a pretty unique channel like what what have you found is unique to that are keys to winning in Costco that's maybe different to other retailers yeah boy Costco is certainly up here I mean I live in Kirkland and if you've ever seen yeah there you go Kirkland Signature right on Costco Costco's a huge deal in the northwest it's a huge deal everywhere but it's a huge deal in the northwest especially cause it was started right in our backyard here and it's a different beast it's a different beast altogether it's super different than almost any other retailer that you'll find out there I think one of the things that's analogous to a lot of big retailers you know Kroger's big in the northwest your you know Safeway Albertsons that kind of stuff is that they yield a tremendous amount of power because of the the purchasing opportunity that they provide you know it's a it's a huge opportunity when I was at alusion through Anheuser Busch we pitched Walmart nationally which was I mean it could change your whole world with Walmart but like Walmart you know Walmart didn't like POS stuff they didn't like like big giant promotion stuff they all have their own sort of considerations Costco's is really unique especially when you're working in the in the ALC Bev space is that they want they want unique stuff for their membership and that starts to get really tricky because in ALC Bev you can't produce necessarily a package for one retailer right that package has to be available across a wide swath you know good old three tier old school prohibition laws but I think trying to do that is a really great way to go to market now Costco you know they typically want 24 pack of stuff which is different you're not gonna find a 24 pack necessarily in a safe way they just don't have room for it and then trying to do something unique for Costco when I worked at Kona that was a big part of a lot of the packages that we produced is like okay well what what's the we used to call them 24 loose packs back then I you know now they're just a smattering of of cans and six packs and stuff but what is the unique stuff that we can produce for a Costco how how can we meet Costco where they're at with the tools and within the guidelines that we have to follow and I think that's a big part of the retail business the three tier business the alcohol business is like because you can't sell directly to the consumer you have to go through wholesalers and retailers you kind of do have three customers you've got your wholesaler partner that gets the stuff on shelf in the first place you got your retailer partner which sells it to the customer and then finally you've got your end customer so that was the big challenge with Costco but working with Costco was always great and like trying to figure out what that stuff was so yeah that sounds great yeah that's what I've heard is you know they definitely grind you down the numbers from like a you know working relationship how they work with you is they're they're great I will say they would bring me along they meaning the sales team would bring you know this crazy marketing guy along to a lot of these meetings especially when I was at Craft Brew Alliance and I will say I mean I've I've pitched a Safeway corporate down in Pleasanton I've pitched a Kroger corporate in Cincinnati boy a local Costco meeting with the Costco like store manager where they've got their numbers on their computer right behind them I mean man it's pressure packed they know their numbers like you would not believe and like hats off to them because yeah it is you know it's a it's a definitely a window into into that world they move some product boy I'll tell you what sure they've got a great business yeah great business for sure what's your what's your take on on the hemp beverage category impact on alcohol space and you know whatever you're you're able and willing to share if and how actly is looking at this space yeah I mean good this has been this has been a topic of conversation that I've had for years years I mean we had it all throughout my time at Alision Anheuser Busch was talking about it in really really big ways I think I think everybody in the beer business to some degree is trying to figure out the answer to this question I think for a while you know certainly like Lagunitas tried to do the THC beer a while ago and and got kind of in some hot water for it some other brands have tried doing that you know dank IPAs were a big deal for a while we did one at delusion with dank dust which was an amazing exercise to work with the Anheuser Busch lawyers on but that I don't know I don't know what the viability of that crossover will ever be and and what I mean by that is I don't know if you'll ever see like a THC and alcohol beverage come together let me just say I don't know if you're gonna see it necessarily in the short term first of all the legalities of that are still kind of a little bit of a nightmare secondly I mean is that something that a consumer even would want I don't know but I'll tell you the the hemp beverage CBD beverage Adaptogen beverage THC beverage world is fascinating and I think that there's a real opportunity there I think that there's a new frontier there I think everybody's talking about it you know and certainly in the ALK business because it's a competitor that I don't want to say that nobody saw coming but it's a competitor that I don't think people really fully realized five six seven eight years ago you know it's funny one of my favorite phrases this was actually coined by an old Pepsi executive but they used it at Anheuser Busch all the time share of throat meaning you know how many different beverages is someone consuming and what's the share that you know your beverage has on that particular person's throat I guess weirdly now I heard someone say the other day share of buzz which I thought was kind of great I like that and and it broadens it right and it was actually a guy at a wholesaler that I was talking to share of buzz and I was like wow that wow that opens things up considerably and I think that if you work in the ALC Bev space honestly I think if you work in the energy space you gotta be thinking about it so you know no no real plans on my end or our end or you know but certainly a topic of conversation of like you know boy isn't this interesting so it'll be fascinating to see where that goes in the future I mean it's one of those things right where you're like it's just a matter of time it's just a matter of time before this nut gets cracked and you know it's like from that movie Margin Call Jeremy Irons character says there are three 3 ways to survive in business right to be smarter to be first or cheat and you know we don't cheat and we're not we're not trying to convince anybody that we're smarter so it's better to just be first I don't know it'll be interesting to see what what happens with it I'm I'm certainly excited to see it definitely I agree yeah Nick has been great really appreciate the time got a lot of really good insights here excited to share this round what's the best place for people to fall along with you and I know actually there's so many different brands on portfolio I don't know what's the best way to fall along with louder yeah whatever you want to yeah let me let me rattle off 15 websites to you no you know Acme brands.com is where you can find information about you you know actually and what we're doing you know each of the brands have links in there me I'm on Instagram at the Nick Mallory or nick Mallory dot com kind of you know in those avenues but yeah man I I appreciate the time thanks for listening to me ramble about this stuff and it was super fun so likewise awesome I'm kind of curious what other key variables once you guys acquire a brand standardized playbook for those first so what does your your current team look like at actly ongoing like contact contractors what is your yeah I mean haven't made the decision to definitely move forward that need for obviously a brand decides to do a rebrand I know rogue just launched THC drinks in some markets