There are a lot more people that make up Neshaminy Creek than there were when the Philadelphia-area brewery began and Kyle Park, the brewery’s Director of Sales & Marketing, pointed out that there are a lot more people that drink Neshaminy Creek than ever before now as well.
With that thought process, the brewery recently underwent a rebranding effort to show off that maturity and new voice.
“We wanted the new look to reflect that instead of being super specific to a smaller group of people or interests,” he told Brewer. “We wanted to be a bit more inclusive so all of our employees and drinkers can see a bit of themselves in the brand without losing our distinctive voice.”
Park said he had been quietly thinking about a packaging refresh for a while because of how drastically the market had changed since the brewery first started distributing cans.
“I thought we needed to better position ourselves,” he said. “We had made some tweaks to our previous branding that quite frankly, did more harm than good. We had kind of lost the thread in that department and things had gotten messy.
“There were also a lot of internal changes with management and the overall direction of the brewery. Then our previous graphic designer decided to step away in late 2020 and I knew our 10th anniversary was on the horizon so that’s what really prompted the change.”
It can be frightening to take away your established look and throw it all out the window but Park said given how much the brewery had changed, it really needed to happen.
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“We used to have a lot of concerts at the brewery and a lot of our branding was tied to punk rock but we’ve pumped the brakes on those shows and brought some focus back to the beer itself,” he pointed out. “Maybe because we’re all a little older or maybe because it wasn’t always a benefit but our voice just isn’t as aggressive as it used to be so we wanted to elevate our look a bit so everything felt more cohesive.
“Whereas our older labels may have felt like comic books, our new labels feel more like a graphic novel.”
Saying it was “nerve-wracking,” Park and his crew began the process of “looking for a mate.”
Wanting to better reflect what Neshaminy Creek is today and not what it might have been 10 years ago was a key in the rebrand. Throughout 2021, Park said they were lucky enough to work with a variety of artists on new labels while starting conversations with Fried Design Co. about the overall rebrand.
“We were essentially setting ourselves up for a marriage with these designers that we just met,” he said. “Fried had some experience in the craft beer field and other “vice” industries so their work is really what drew me to them first but luckily, their whole team gels really well with us too.”
“I had always been interested in this part of the business so I would casually keep tabs on marketing and design trends but I really just started doing a lot of Googling and had a lot of tabs open while I was researching what our next steps should be. We knew how much work this was going to be so we approached a handful of design firms rather than individual artists and got to know them the best we could over some Zoom calls to see who would be the best fit.”
Neshaminy Creek did some discounts on merch in the taproom with the old logo leading up to the rebrand but Park said they had been proactively letting inventory get low so they wouldn’t have a huge problem unloading a lot.
Similarly, they kept a close eye on label and beer inventory to help clear out all the old labels around the same time. In the past, he said, they instead had made some piecemealed changes to labels and lineups.
“I really wanted this rebrand to launch as one big cohesive thing at once,” he said, adding it was a logistical nightmare during the pandemic and supply chain issues.
“But luckily our Logistics Manager, Kevin Day, was able to keep us on track and we pulled it off,” he said.
“We had all put in so much thought, time, and energy into it so I really wanted it to hit the ground running and make a big statement right from the start.”
The key was making that plan early and sticking to it. With that plan in place, all the new labels started rolling out at the end of 2021 so they were able to start the 10th anniversary year reenergized with a fresh face.
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