Craft beer branding — creativity with intelligence!
Shishkin is a well-known craft brewery in Samara with a significant market share in the region. To further scale up the business, the Shishkin team decided to enter the bottled craft beer market in Moscow.

The question of beer branding arose and the guys contacted our agency. At the initial stage of negotiations, we discussed our approach, the basis of which is a bridge between the consumer->brand->retail. And then the work began.

What can craft beer branding look like? — and you can often hear the answer: “As you like!” This is true and this is obvious from the first visit to a craft beer retailer: an abundance of graphics and ideas. But even in such a creative field as craft beer, an academic approach will not hurt, but on the contrary, will help to make a more informed decision.

The research stage consisted of:

Qualitative research stage: communication with consumers, communication with industry professionals, communication with professionals from Shishkin (to collect opinions/hypotheses);

Quantitative testing on consumers (testing these opinions/hypotheses on consumers);

Creative stage of work:

Search for possible positioning territories and selection of one territory;
Development of a creative concept and packaging design;

Brand development:

SKU development;
Promotion in social networks;
Based on the research, we offered the Shishkin team several positioning territories. The chosen territory is Search. Most craft beer consumers are constantly searching for:

New and/or unusual;
Sensations that they experienced from beer a long time ago;
Existential search, which craft contributes to even more;
Based on this territory, we offered several visual concepts. The choice fell on the concept – Labyrinth. Search is the passage of this Labyrinth.

Development on SKU occurs due to different illustrative styles in the image of this Labyrinth. These styles can be infinitely pure and this idea can fully develop further.

Currently the brand works on 9 SKU and is actively developing in social networks.