Which brewery needs to change their packaging and labeling

I really like their tasting room and their beer for the most part, I just find their labels to be a little bland and boring.

 

Alittle late to the party but I see a lot of hate for against the grain. I love all of their labels, they are all interesting and tell you what your getting while still all fitting the same style so they can be recognized as a brand all the while actually being artistic.
Couldn't agree more with others though like green flash and hoppin' frog. Because of the price and bad label I haven't had any of their offerings and probably won't any time soon. There's a lot of people saying the label doesn't or shouldn't matter but i'm sorry your just flat out wrong. Should every beer be in a plain brown bottle marked in sharpie? The answer is obviously no. Marketing is an unfathomably large part of doing business. Of every dollar a customer gives to a company 50% should go to marketing.

 

I think we can safely guess what occupational field you work in!

 

Bet you didn't guess college kid! That comes straight from my macroeconomics textbook!

I'd also like to add that as a college kid I have had plenty of friends come up and say "Oh man I tried this new really good beer, the one with the gold monkey on it. I saw that gold monkey and just had to get it."
This crap happens alllllllllll the time. Just because the majority of everyone on this site knows beer and brewers and how to shop for it all doesn't mean the majority of consumers do. So while a label may or may not influence you'r purchase it will influence others, even if you think it shouldn't or "that's dumb".

 

Tallgrass labels are as bad as the beer inside

 

I was going to say Olde Hickory, but they went and redesigned their labels, and are absolutely fantastic now.

Old Label


New Label

 

I see, maybe you're looking to get into marketing then...?

I think if every company put 50% into marketing, it would be an enormous industry with a lot of those salvaged Liberal Arts degrees happily finding paid work in fields somewhat more enjoyable than what they're currently stuck in.

The reality is companies do what works best for them. If they're profitable it doesn't matter, and what makes them money isn't always the same strategy. The variety on this list alone is pretty wild: https://vtldesign.com/inbound-marke.../percent-of-revenue-spent-on-marketing-sales/

 

I really miss the old Long Trail labels. I always felt they added a ton of Vermont character and playfulness. Now they look like every other brewery on the shelf. I've written to them several times and they basically said it was time to move on. Maybe so, but I still feel they could be a bit more fun.


Not to mention them discontinuing most of my favorite products. But that's a different story for a different thread.

 

Kansas Territory Brewing. Every single beer looks the same, and it's boring on the eyes.

 

Wow!

 

Agreed.


. . . I like the cans and the beer inside them.

 

That, sir, is why I don't buy their beer, i.e. fear that their brown ale tastes like the shit they portray so proudly on label, fear that there is some ungodly use of chicken parts in their beer to justify the feathers on Kentucky Ryed, etc. To me they are the stupidest and most gimmicky American (don't worry BrewDog your European Advertising Darwin Award is safe)labels that are the only labels to actually cause me, a person who normally only cares about what is inside the bottle, to decide to NEVER buy their beer.

 

I doubt anyone has heard of them (for the reasons listed on this thread), but Climax Brewing Co in Roselle, NJ. Horrible labeling/branding with mediocre beer....

 

that new label is great!

 

Most of their labels simply don't appeal to me. They are not something I would just pick off the shelf if it wasn't for the good beer inside.

Which brings me to something mentioned a few times in this thread, the label playing zero role in beer buying. I for one, quit often, buy new beers that I know noting about (e.g. haven't had it before, haven't had anything from that brewery, haven't heard it talked about, don't look it up on here before buying). And when doing that buying, the label is really the only thing go on. So the label is very important when I'm buying new beers, as I would imagine it is also for those who are not so ingrained into the beer culture.

 

I also find the name Smuttynose in itself to be a turn-off

 

White Birch is horrific. Most of the labels/cans are colored to look like what's inside them (ie: the pictured beer is a purpley color, the blueberry variant is sky blue, etc) and it just feels clumsy and lacks cohesion. And the logo looks like a giant bar code at even a slight distance. And no dates.


At least the cans have all these issues, I've seen photos of the 22 oz bottles with a clean, white label and date:



Not sure why they don't go this route with everything, the 22 oz bottles look a lot better. Not great...but better. The logo still needs a lot of work, though.

 

How about when they filter it?

 

This is a pretty bad one too. Entirely holographic label, and with a little "Normal Is Weird" in the top left. Maybe imitating the FFF style a bit? I dunno. It's atrocious.

 

What the actual fuck am I looking at here?