Leading Marketing for a 15-Brand Bev-Alc PE Portfolio | Nick Mallory, Ackley Brands

Speaker: 00:00
Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Nick Mallory, VP of VP of Marketing at Ackley 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 going to dive into here in just a second. Prior to Tallini Marketing at Ackley, Nick Rand marketing for well-known craft beer brands like Elysian Brewing, Rogue Ales, Big One of 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 to kind of level set people that aren't as familiar with the Ackley 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 that we'll go from there.

Speaker 1: 00:47
Yeah, so Ackley Brands is a subset of Ackley Capital. Uh, 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 forever, you know, grandpa's, grandpa's, grandpa kind of a thing. And they started Ackley Capital in 2016. Uh, Jay Ackley's son, Brandon Ackley, started Ackley Brands, which was originally conceived as Ackley Beverage Group, but then switched over to Ackley Brands. They started purchasing brands in the wine space with Montanor Estates out of good old Forest Grove, Oregon, and then have grown it pretty consistently since then, with the last 18 months being uh a considerable period of growth. Uh, currently there's about 15 brands under management. 13 of those are in the wine space, two craft breweries, Silver City out of Bremerton, Washington, and then uh good old Mac and Jack's, a long-held staple in the Seattle and Greater Washington area for about 30 plus 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 Ackley brands started to grow pretty considerably. And uh, 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 uh 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 Montanor that's been around for forever. Hoague wines in the portfolio is a, I mean, gosh, a staple in the Northwest. Believe it or not. I can't even imagine what the wine business was like in 62. Uh, so 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 is 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 really that's kind of been the goal of Ackley. A little bit different, I guess, than sort of your tried and true died-in-the-wool PE group, which is, you know, a little bit more focused on profitability and turnaround and that kind of stuff. We tend to take a long-lensed approach to these brands, which I think given the current climate of Alkebev is is a solid way to look at it for sure.

Speaker: 03:52
Yeah. Beyond just uh that legacy component, I'm kind of curious what other key variables really define a brand as a good fit for the Accolite portfolio.

Speaker 1: 04:03
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 br 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 U of O, so I can't speak ill of Nike in any way. But if if Nike, God forbid, started fledgling and really dying, you know, it'd be 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 um, 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 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 Al KB 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 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 plus 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 101 ner-y 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 uh just a lot of low-hanging fruit to to take and run with.

Speaker: 06:44
Once you guys acquire a brand, do you have somewhat of a standardized playbook for those first, 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?

Speaker 1: 06:57
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 that 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 freewheeling entity. You know, this brand is really well known. We don't necessarily have to worry about top-of-funnel activities. This brand is all about pushing it 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 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 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. UDUP, 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 for each one.

Speaker: 09:36
Following along in that same track, I've heard you talk about something along the lines of thin slicing your market 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 the way they're positioned. I'm just kind of curious because from what I know, you know, your team is isn't huge. It's kind of like a shared services across the portfolio. Like how do you and your team do so much like context switching back and forth between the brands so often and do that so effectively?

Speaker 1: 10:05
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 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 them out. The two big things that we're always looking for with a brand in the Al Kabebev 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 two, 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 priority 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 downriver 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 because you can't catch them all, you know?

Speaker: 13:42
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:42
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.

Speaker: 13:49
Have you guys ever thought about good trying to be a bit more having 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 and this person only owns this brand at all?

Speaker 1: 13:59
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 Portland. They owned Widmer Brothers. They were at the Widmer Brothers Brewery there on the east side of Portland, Red Hook, longtime 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 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 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 think that at this point you're just trying to wrap your hands around the uh 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, that at CBA, it was a lot further down the road in how they were developed, but it was always a great model. I I loved working there for sure.

unknown: 15:47
Yeah.

Speaker: 15:48
So what does your your current team look like at Ackley? And that's looking at both FTEs as well as, you know, core agencies or ongoing, like contractors, freelancers look like to support the org and all those different brands and businesses under the portfolio.

Speaker 1: 16:03
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 is really fun 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. Uh, 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 priorities shift and as you know, executions get bigger. And you know, that's I think that's always the the goal moving forward.

Speaker: 17:50
What does your uh your kind of like agency due diligence process look like?

Speaker 1: 17:54
Yeah. I mean, 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 potentially someone we'd wanna we'd want to connect with.

Speaker: 18:49
Elysian Brewing is a big brand. I think they're under A, B, and Bev. Rogue, it's 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 at after making that shift?

Speaker 1: 19:04
Yeah, boy. So I started it at Rogue Um in Portland. And 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 them I said that. But you know, rogue, rogue was great. It 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. It was 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 the 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 a huge legacy brand. Everybody knew, relatively medium-ish, I would say, in the beer business, small, media, it, medium-ish. But then I transitioned over to Kona, which was the juggernaut at CBA. And we were, when I was at C BA, we were 30. I it's some crazy number. It's like 34.7% owned by A B. So we had visibility to the A-B network. Craft Brew Lines ended up becoming fully bought out by A B. And then it was off to Allesion. And Allegian is large craft brewery, uh, 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, ABMB, which was uh 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 A B and to see how big Big is. And holy cow, is it big? And then from there, I worked with, I worked at Boneyard. I took a little sojourn to Boneyard Beer, which is in Bend, owned by Deschutes. Deschutes is pretty big, but Boneyard was like Boneyard 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 beer's 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 Busch and the Anheuser Busch 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 shippy 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 super awesome and part of what we do. So uh, you know, obviously I think scale's 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.

Speaker: 23:59
For sure. Now it'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.

Speaker 1: 24:06
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. Don Cay 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 because 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.

Speaker: 25:16
No, that's that's super helpful. It sounds like there's a lot of yeah, context switching, and you you know either way can be a fun experience, but you just gotta be mentally prepared and understand what you're walking into, basically.

Speaker 1: 25:26
Right, right, for sure. For sure.

Speaker: 25:28
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 brands should really focus on getting a really deep understanding of the of their core consumer, their pain points before building that brand identity. Uh, and can you just maybe speak to this approach a bit more and maybe how this works in terms of Ackley, in terms of where you guys are acquiring brands, maybe you're you know refreshing, updating the brands. You do a big deep dive on those customer pain points with understanding the customer as part of that acquisition process. Yeah, I'm kind of curious how the how you think about this in general, how it applies to Ackley specifically?

Speaker 1: 26:05
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 do 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 VBBP, 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 refresh and a rebrand project for one of the brands in the Ackley 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 soared 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 one, don't think about the packaging. Think about the brand and the consumer and how you connect with them.

Speaker: 30:04
On that visual piece, I've heard you say something along the lines of know your coloring box. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 1: 30:10
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. Uh, we I worked on a project. I'm gonna try to say this without calling out the project specifically, but we worked at a project uh 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 look and this feel that was completely anathetical 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 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. And so that's kind of an example of like, you know, losing sight of your coloring box.

Speaker: 32:25
Yeah. Let's say I told you I I run a brand, I run marketing at a at a brand, told you we're considering brand refresh. Haven't made the decision to definitely move forward 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?

Speaker 1: 32:42
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 waning, 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 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 ten, 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 just think having those questions are super, super important. And then, you know, after you answer that why, and you have 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 and great, right? But to do a refresh just because while 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.

Speaker: 36:14
So that's where I'd start. How do you balance that that need for obviously a brand decides if you're rebrand? There's there's a brand refresh, there's 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 feel familiar.

Speaker 1: 36:42
Boy, I mean, now I feel like you had a microphone and a recorder on me during all of these meetings because 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 brand refresh that we were working on for Mac and Jacks, 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, okay, 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 Jax, not all have an 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 Jacks as a word mark, 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 one 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 Rubens Brews, 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 want to make sure that that connection stays true.

Speaker: 39:23
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 to really achieve sustained success from a velocity standpoint? Like what's the main stuff did you guys focus on that you feel like has has the biggest impact?

Speaker 1: 39:49
Yeah, um, like my, you know, this this poor guy uses name all the time. My business law professor, Mark Phelps at uh 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. Uh, 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 want to say nightmare, but like a logistical, not a great dream sometimes.

Speaker: 41:41
Yeah, yeah. I think you guys have a pretty big presence at at Costco, at least some of the brands. You know, Costco's a pretty unique channel. Like, what have you found is unique to that are keys to winning in Costco that's maybe different to other retailers?

Speaker 1: 41:55
Yeah, boy, Costco is certainly up here. I mean, I live in Kirkland, and if you've ever seen 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 because 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 Absco, that kind of stuff, is that they yield a tremendous amount of power because of the purchasing opportunity that they provide. You know, it's a it's a huge opportunity. When I was at Allegian 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 AUK Bev space, is that they want, they want unique stuff for their membership. And that starts to get really tricky because in AUK Bev, you can't produce necessarily a package for one retailer. That package has to be available across a wide swath, you know, good old three-tier old school prohibition loss. 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 going to 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. It's like, okay, well, what's the we used to call them 24 loose packs back then. I, you know, now they're just a smattering of cans and six packs and stuff. But what is the unique stuff that we can produce for a Costco? 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 in like trying to figure out what that stuff was. So that's okay.

Speaker: 44:30
Yeah, that's what I've heard is you know, they definitely grind you down the numbers, but from like a you know working relationship, how they work with you is they're they're great.

Speaker 1: 44:37
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 Kraft 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 it is, you know, it's a it's a definitely a window into into that world. They moved some products, boy. I'll tell you what. They got a great business. Yeah, great business for sure.

Speaker: 45:19
Last question for you. What's your what's your take on the on the hemp beverage category, impact on the alcohol space, and you know, whatever you're you're able and willing to share, if and how Ackley's looking at this space.

Speaker 1: 45:33
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 Allegian. 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 Loganitas 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 a lesion 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 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 I think everybody's talking about it, you know, and certainly in the AUC 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, sheriff 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, sheriff buzz, which I thought was kind of great.

Speaker: 47:29
I like that.

Speaker 1: 47:29
And and it broadens it, right? And it was actually a guy at a wholesaler that I was talking to, Sheriff Buzz. And I was like, wow, that, wow, that opens things up considerably. And I think that if you work in the AUCEV 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 know Rogue just launched THZ drinks in some markets. 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 Iron's character says there are three three 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.

Speaker: 48:37
Definitely, I agree. Well, yeah, Nick, this has been great. I really appreciate the time. A lot of really insights here. Excited to share this around. What's the best place for people to follow along with you? And I know Actley got so many different brands on portfolio. I don't know what's the best way to follow along with all outer, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 48:52
Let me let me rattle off 15 websites to you. No, you know, Ackley Brands.com is where you can find information about you know Ackley 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 nickmallory.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.

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