Offered: Fall and Spring

Fall Dates: TBD
Spring Dates: February 21 – April 16, 2024
Course Tuition: $1495 ($1196 for Certificate Alumni,  Pink Boots Society, Home Brewers or Brewers Association Members Discount)
Course Duration: 8 weeks
Learning Format: Online

Instructors: Mike Kallenberger and Bob Russell

Download a sample Marketing and Branding Your Brewery Syllabus

As competition within the beer industry continues to grow, branding and marketing play an even greater role in ensuring a brewery’s success. While it is important to make great beer, in today’s landscape you also need to know how to build your brand, establish a compelling “WHY” and effectively market your brand and products. This course will address key industry trends, identify “best-practices” in differentiating your brewery, reveal how to build a solid branding and marketing plan, and demonstrate how to measure success and plan for the future.

Participants will examine

  • Key opportunities and challenges in today’s beer/beverage marketplace
  • The craft beer drinker and his/her motivations
  • The role that marketing, branding and sales play and how they are interconnected
  • Basic requirements of a successful business/marketing plan
  • Positioning strategy in detail and how it influences all brewery decisions
  • Choices a new brewery faces in terms of packaging, distribution and pricing
  • How the principles of positioning and branding have been successfully applied to specific objectives (i.e. naming, rebranding, portfolio selection, taproom/brewery design)
  • How a brewery successfully promotes its brand and products
  • How events, sponsorships and promotions help to build valuable connections to the consumer audience
  • How to decide between self-distribution and a wholesaler partnership and the key criteria within each
  • How to evaluate the performance of marketing and branding activities
  • How to incorporate key findings into a marketing plan

Schedule

Week 1: Trends in The U.S. Beer Market
Week 2: Trends in The Craft Category
Week 3: Basics of Marketing and Branding
Week 4: Brand Positioning Strategy
Week 5: Branding Examples (Part One)
Week 6: Branding Examples (Part Two)
Week 7: Marketing Execution
Week 8: Measurement and Research