Redesigning the face of Covington

Strawberry

TEAM ECHO
Jacob Bellairs
Nicole Gunderson
Logan Kadinger
Cody LeJeune
Xiomara Martin
Alyssa Tudor

Table of Contents:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.

Executive Summary
Introduction to Report
Background
Marketing
Competition
Compare and Contrast
Team Tasks
Strategy for Change
Summary Conclusion
Works Cited

I.
Executive Summary:
In order to most effectively determine which business recommendation we would
engage in, our team has first decided to rank the different topics by personal
preference. It was determined, through this method that our top three choices were:
Brand Awareness, Marketing to Females, and Label Design. After reducing the ten
options down to three, we created a series of five factors for determining the most
necessary recommendation. The five factors were: Our knowledge about the topic, our
personal interest in the topic, ability to obtain new information about the topic,
importance of the topic to the business, and how much the topic could potentially effect
the company. After discussing these factors, we have decided that we will focus on the
label of the Strawberry Ale. Although the majority of sales are directly to bars, Covington
Brewhouse currently does not have a label that jumps out at potential consumers as it
sits in a refrigerator behind a bar or on the shelf at the grocery store. To combat this
issue, we have decided to add more vibrant colors to the label, specifically to that of the
strawberry ale, that makes potential buyers eye be drawn to the label. Light blue, the
color of the sky, is a color that represents tranquility and contentment. The red of the
strawberry is a color that the human eye is most drawn to, and invokes a feeling of
passion and love, while also being the most aesthetically pleasing color as well. Both of
these colors and their different meanings were determined by several studies within
color psychology. Several studies have also showed that while red induces a feeling of
lust, it also creates a sense of appetite in people. This has made the choice of putting
multiple strawberries, in quantity, in the picture to make the potential buyer hungry for
our product.

II.

Introduction to the Report:

The three primary beer style labels and six pack carriers reflect the brewerys
early focus on males in the 40-60 age categories. They are rather plain and traditional,
definitely not the label or carrier that jump out at you as you walk down the beer aisle in

the grocery. The owners are considering what labeling/carrier approaches they should
employ. Should all labels and carriers be redesigned with a new consistent theme?
Alternatively, should each beer style be unique and promoted in accordance with its
particular qualities? How should label and six pack carrier design be utilized to appeal to
the target market audience.

III.

Background:

The craft beer industry is in the midst of explosive growth in the US; the business
has never made money during its eight years of operation; the current sponsors are the
third owners and the process of determining a price for an entity with negative cash flow
was interesting. The founder was a German master brewer whose product is far
removed from typical craft beer products; the succeeding owner was a successful oil
and gas engineer who liked the science aspects of a brewery, but did not have a
background in marketing. The initial target market was males in the 40-60 age range;
the new target market is typical craft beer drinkers males aged 21-35; a rebranding,
re-naming, re-designed beer labels exercise was in process; the original master brewer
left the company 2.5 years ago and significant problems with quality control ensued.
The inconsistent product resulted in some level of brand impairment; revenues declined
by over 50%, apparently attributed largely to the inconsistent quality; one beer accounts
for nearly 45% of revenues; while perhaps 80% of revenues for craft beer businesses is
generated by males, the primary beer of this company, Strawberry Ale, is perhaps
driven by more than 50% female sales. There has never been any targeted marketing
oriented to females nor to minorities; there was not an active marketing presence for a
couple of years, in part resulting in low brand awareness even in restaurants and bars in
its Covington hometown. On the production side, the brewery is basically running on a
brew pub type of operation with limited growth capacity; currently brewing 3,500 bbls
per year, growth beyond perhaps 7,000 bbls/yr. will require the development of a new
production facility. So, this is a dynamic time in the industry, the business history
includes a fair number of strategic miscalculations. The new sponsors have an
opportunity to inject new energy, creativity and direction into the enterprise, and this is a
company that happens to produce beer, but it is truly a marketing business.

IV.

Marketing:
During our marketing of our product 73% of women said they rather have
flavored beer then un-flavored beer. We did not find this surprising because we too
agree that flavored beer stands out more than un-flavored beer. The reason to this is
because whether an enhanced beer taste good or bad, it will always standout and be

remembered by the customers. After discovering the statistics to this part of our
research we realized that a beer label as well attracts customers. We changed the label
because we felt that the original label was not exciting and out of date.
While changing the label we worked together to come up with a new label that
would catch a customers eye and have to either take a look at the product or try it for
themselves; the new label has more of an it factor to it. We decided to take out the
bike and tree out of the picture and add in an old time red truck strawberries in the field,
this gives it more of a strawberry ale feel. Since we added bright and new colors to the
label we discovered that it would attract people more, and it does.
Many beers do not change their labels because the label is usually something
that sticks for the many years and generations to come. Our goal is to do the same for
Strawberry Ale, to have a label that will stick out and not have to be changed for many
more years. We feel as though the new label will do that and will help market Covington
Brew house a lot more.
Doing the marketing for the flavor and changing the label was a bit of a risk due
to the loyal local customers Strawberry Ale does have. We feel that it will not only attract
its loyal customers more it will also attract new customers from around the state and
possibly expand even further to across the nation.

V.

Competition
2,822 craft breweries represented The US market in 2013. This number is larger
than anywhere in the world. According to craftbeer.com, an American craft beer is
small, independent, and traditional. The overall beer market contains sales of 100
billion dollars and of that craft beer is associated with 14.3 billion dollars. The brewers
association states that, the total sales of craft beer in 2013 were up 17.2% and export
craft beers 49%. The craft brewers reached 7.8% volume of total beer in 2013. The
challenges faced with craft beer have been predominately access to the market, cost of
raw materials and ingredients, and the operations are highly regulated and taxed. Not
only is The Covington Brewhouse having trouble accessing the market against its big
competitor Abita, but The Covington Brewhouse label needs redesigning.
The Covington Brewhouse competes with the world renowned Abita Spring
Brewers. Just like Covington Brewhouse Abita makes Strawberry Ale. Abitas
Strawberry Ale contains 4.2 percent alcohol by volume while the Convington Strawberry
Ale contains 4.5 percent alcohol by volume. Also another fact is the Abita Strawberry
beer is bitterer according to its nutritional facts and alcohol label. Abita contains 13
IBUs and Covington contains 5. Throughout all consumer reports researched
Covingtons Strawberry beer should be at the top of the market, yet Abita is. Research
reports that Abita has done significantly better marketing products than Covington which
is the problem Echo Solutions is willing to fix.

VI.

Compare and Contrast:

Abita Strawberry label and the original Covington Strawberry label are both very
plain. They both have just a plain brand logo. The design on both of these bottles
doesnt really catch the eye of the buyer. With these two labels, Abita will be purchased
at a higher speed than the Covington strawberry because of the brand recognition. With
the current Covington strawberry label and the one that we made, the colors are very
vibrant and they also have a farmhouse in the background. In ours, the position of the
truck gives the illusion that the farmer is on his way home from either picking the
strawberries or trying to sell them. Instead of putting the bike in our label, we decided to
put an old truck to try to appeal to men and draw their eyes to a flavored beer.

ABITA
STRAWBER
RY

ORIGINAL
COVINGTON
STRWABERR
Y

CURRENT
COVINGTON
STRAWBERR
Y

OUR REDESIGN OF
THE COVINGTON
STRAWBERRY

VII.
Team Tasks:
While working with the label design for the Strawberry Ale made by Covington
Brewhouse, Team Echo decided that every member should get a certain team roles to
evenly divide the workload. The different roles/tasks are:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Background/Title page
Marketing/Survey
Competition
Compare/Contrast Strawberry Ales
Forming Team Roles
Editor

The team started off by discussing who should be in charge of the background and title
page of our consulting report. After a quick discussion, Team Echo decided Alyssa was
the best person for the task, because she is the best with Microsoft Word and is very
creative. After choosing Alyssa for the first task, the team turned to the
Marketing/Survey side of the project. Focusing on a new label design Team Echo
wanted to make the Strawberry Ale more appealing to women while keeping the current
male customers satisfied. After long consideration, the team decided that Xiomara was
the best pick for the job! She has the most experience with marketing and wanted to
conduct the teams survey. After placing Xiomara in her role, we turned to the
competition of other strawberry ales in relation to the Covington Brewhouse. Team Echo
instantly decided on Nicole for the job. Nicole is a bartender and will use her customer
service skills to talk to her different customers to discover what they think is the
competition in relation with online research. After placing Nicole into her role, Team
Echo changed its focus on comparing and contrasting different Strawberry Ales. The
Team thought Logan was best for this task. He is great at researching statistics and
wanted to take it upon himself to taste the different ales and conduct research with
others of age to get a one on one view of different peoples reactions to the taste of the
different strawberry ales. Forming the team roles was next on the teams list and that
task was appointed to Cody. Cody has great leadership skills and wanted to overlook
the different roles and make sure the other team members were doing their tasks. The
last role the team needed to give was editor. Even though Jacob was the last person
without a task, editor was perfect for him. He has exceptional writing skills and put the
consulting report together in the best way possible.
VIII.

Strategy for change:

Echo Solutions looked at the problem at hand for Covington Brewhouse and decided to
focus on one label in particular, Strawberry Ale, and implemented a change to its label
in hopes that the concept could be adapted to the other craft beers produced by
Covington Brewhouse. In order to redesign the labels, there were three questions that
we focused on in order to produce the best concept. The questions were: Should all
labels and carriers be redesigned with a new consistent theme, Should each beer style
be unique and promoted in accordance with its particular qualities, and How should
label and six pack carrier design be utilized to appeal to the target market audience? In
order to answer these questions most effectively, we needed to gain some market
research of our own.

Should all labels and carriers be redesigned with a new consistent theme?

Each different style of beer should have the consistency of the Covington Brewhouse
Logo as a sticker on the neck of the beer. It will be similar to the design of the bud light
bottles, in order to continue promoting the beer even when it is in a koozie or being
held around the base. The label of the different beers, however, should be
individualized.

Should each beer style be unique and promoted in accordance with its particular
qualities?

When polling different women around the campus of Southeastern, we have discovered
that 73% of women preferred to buy beer that is flavored as opposed to non-flavored
beer. When doing research on what attracts the human eye, we focused on color-based
branding to appeal to potential buyers. It was discovered, through our research, that the
color red is one of the most attractive colors and instigates a feeling of appetite as well
as love; two characteristics that we deem necessary in food and beverage sales. If we
can present a product that says Im hungry and I love your beer, we can sell more of
the product to customers.
We actually decided to take this process a step further and redesign the label in order to
appeal to buyers more. We replaced the bike with an old-time truck, driving down a dirt
road encompassed by strawberry fields. There are crates of strawberries in the bed of
the truck, with some strawberries falling out of the back of the truck. We have replaced
the original red and orange sky with a baby blue and more calming red. Blue is known
to induce a sense of tranquility and calmness within the person looking at it. We have
also added more vibrant green to attract the eye to the beer and hopefully attract buyers
to the label of the beer.
Our biggest fear when redesigning the label was that we would potentially lose male
customers due to the more playful and colorful design of the strawberry ale. In order to

combat this issue, we put an old-timey, red, beat-up truck right in the middle of the logo.
Old trucks have a habit of appealing to the older population of men (40-60) who may
have owned the truck, but also appeal to the collegiate and recently graduated men who
gain a sense of pride and hard-work from seeing the truck.
After creating the new label, we showed it to 50 men and 50 women of various ages to
see how they felt about the new design compared to the old design, and the overall
consensus is that it is much more liked by both parties than the previous label. The old
design, they said, was dark and dreary; two words that you would not typically want
associated with strawberries and beer. The new design was colorful and invoked a
sense of springtime and happiness as said by one female observant. We specifically
asked a few of the men who looked at it what they thought about the brightness and
vibrancy and ultimately the consensus was that although it was bright, it didnt produce
a sense of femininity in the beer. According to a recent study, women are growing as
beer drinkers due to an increase in craft beers, like the brewhouse specializes in
(http://www.craftbrewingbusiness.com/news/survey-women-drinking-beer-men-drinkingless/). Our label is primarily designed to support this growth by appealing more strongly
to women.

How should label and six pack carrier design be utilized to appeal to the target
market audience?

In our process, we have discovered that vibrancy is key to attracting people to the beer.
6 Pack carriers will be what attracts the buyers in stores to the beer, whereas the label
is what will draw their attention at the bar where they are for individual sale. The sixpack carrier should still be a reflection of the label on the beer, but instead of having the
label be encompassed by dark green vines, they will have strawberries hanging from a
bush. The brightness of these colors is instrumental and will draw more customers to
the beer. Our new label design will be effective enough with our target audience that it
will draw customers whether in the bar or in the store.
IX.

Summary Conclusion:
Although Echo Solutions has brought a new concept to Covington Brewhouse,
they are not a company that would truly suffer without the changes. The changes we are
suggesting are ones that will help increase profit of the company, but not one that will
change the entirety of Covington Brewhouse. We are not recommending a complete
facelift, but an increase of attention to the smaller details that can make larger impacts.
Changing the face of Covingtons main labels will make the company look like it is
reinventing itself without changing any of the internal processes that it currently uses.
Label redesign is a cheap alternative to refacing the entire brand, and produces a result
very similar to what rebranding would do. Our goal is to make the average consumer

become aware that Covington Strawberry Ale is on the shelf, because we are certain
that if we can get them to pick up the carrier, the taste of this delicious ale will bring
them back over and over again.
Echo Solutions thanks the Covington Brewhouse for allowing us to go on this
adventure with them, and hopes that the vices we have put in place will serve to the
benefit of this incredible company. Your dedication to your product does not go
unnoticed and we hope that we can help others grow to appreciate your product as
much as we, the members of Echo Solutions, have appreciated your desire to continue
making Covington Brewhouse the premier craft beer of Louisiana. We hope that
success follows you on your journey towards this very attainable goal.

X.

Works Cited

http://www.craftbrewingbusiness.com/news/survey-women-drinking-beer-men-drinkingless/