HEY JOE BREWING COMPANY
RECOGNITIONS
2020 - Platinum Award: Best Taphandle (Africa Middle East & Beyond | Craft Beer Marketing Awards
2020 - Platinum Award: Best Taproom (Africa Middle East & Beyond | Craft Beer Marketing Awards
2019 - Silver Medal: Design & Lable Awards (Labels In A Series)
2019 - Bronze Medal: Design & Lable Awards (Single Label)
CHALLENGE
Given just the name of the brewery based on a Jimmy Hendrix song, the task was set out to conceptualize a unique craft beer brand that stood out against the other 254 other competitors amidst the explosion of craft beer scene in South Africa and in particular in the Western Cape region.
Hired for full turn-key branding services & marketing operations - from concept to incubation that lasted 4 years, the HJBC brand sent shockwaves to an industry where the many brewery brands unimaginably offered a lager and an overly bitter West Coast IPA.
STRATEGY
We set out to create an educative, informative brand that was obsessed with changing the palate of the common South African beer drinker.
This could not be done at a liquor store, but could be a success at the brewery itself — a highly educated & enthusiastic brewery taproom staff offering tastings & spitting out beer knowledge allowed the brand to become an instant success.
A TURN-KEY BRANDING & MARKETING OPERATION
Hey Joe Beer Company is a craft brewery concept built around education, tasting culture, and changing the palate of the common South African beer drinker.
The project focused on developing a brand that could communicate the personality and knowledge-driven culture of the brewery while creating a distinctive identity across the taproom, packaging, and customer experience.
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In-depth research and analysis was performed to allow us to unique position the brand.
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With many a brewery fighting for its place in shelf space at regional and national liquor stores, the decision was made to keep it local (and lekker) - a destination brewery in the culinary food capital of South Africa serving up and introducing Belgian beer styles that most of the South African market had yet to even be aware of.
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In a highly competitive industry, identity modeling was our biggest task to undertake. BLCK95 designed the brand visual identity for HJBC.
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items:
- email signatures
- website & online store
- review platforms (TripAdvisor, RateBeer etc.)
- menus & kitchen branding
- staff uniforms
- sales material + trade presenters
- promotional material
- posters, email newsletters
- restaurant/taproom branding + decor -
Items:
- all beer release marketing
- single-release beer labeling (BLCK95 designed the core range beer labels)
- keg disks, keg caps, keg bands, beer caps (designed by BLCK95)
- beer packaging (4-pack, 6-pack, 12-pack & 24-pack designed by BLCK95)
- beer coasters (designed BLCK95)
- beer menus, tasting trays
- table talkers -
Items:
- hats (designed by BLCK95)
- shirts (designed by BLCK95)
- gift packs -
Items:
- website
- online store creation & store management
- social media management
- email management
- review platforms management -
Item:
- all photography (studio shoots by Paige Fiddes Creative)
- films (contributors: Gareth Kaatze, Richard Wolff, Luke Bell)
- animation (animation by Feral Child)
- graphic design -
A 4-year journey that helped build, launch and grow the brand from ideation.
Overview
AFRICA’S PREMIUM BELGIAN-INSPIRED BREWERY
A destination brewery built in the scenic town of Franschhoek, nestled between the Cape vineyards of the Winelands. With the region internationally renowned for its culinary and wine experiences, Hey Joe Brewing Co. set out to go against the grain.
HJBCs unique offering of Belgian-inspired beers with import-only ingredients allowed for its positioning to be premium but with a youthful modern twist. Set out to accommodate locals, families, and tourists alike, a brand was built and incubated for 4 years that the South African beer industry had never expected and learned to love.
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A NON-CONFORMIST AMONG CONSERVATIVES
The Belgians are known for their non-conformist attitude and culture - this was embedded at the core of the brand identity and messaging during the brand development phase. After travelling to Belgium for in-depth market research (yes, we drank a lot of strong beer too) we uncovered unique insights about the beer culture in Belgium – a rebellious attitude, strong beers (really strong), and a lot of pop art colours amidst centuries-old iconic buildings in cities like Brugge gave us that light bulb moment.
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The brand identity takes on a non-conformist attitude coupled with a humorous lighthearted personality. We took on a friendly & informative approach to the tone of voice and dedicated much of our brand-customer relationship to educating the audience about Belgian beer styles.
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Imagine a brewery where you arrive on horseback, tie up your pony and enter a taproom that felt like it was mid 19th century. This was the initial idea. Coupled with pop-art colours and funky aesthetics attracted the conservative baby boomers and the youthful millenials.
Visual
CLASSIC & DISTINCTIVE
Key drivers of our visual communication strategy were centred around the brewery’s unique offering and positioning - a full copper brewhouse that has won 4 world award-winning beers during its lifetime (1961 onwards) and an unmatched venue situated on a 2-hectare farm nestled between iconic mountains in the Franschhoek valley, boasting a 400 seater beer garden, full-service restaurant & taproom and an Abbey-style brewery with a wedding venue and lake.
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HJBC has the only full copper brewhouse in Africa. The ‘de halve maan’ copper kettles were built in 1961 in Belgium and made entirely of copper. We portrayed this as our USP through copper swag, from copper foiling on labels, to copper colour bottle tops; to menus with copper sheets, to decor in the taproom that was from the same era with a copper tinge.
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We took a topographical map of the region where the brewery is situated and built our ‘brand pattern’ around this - found on our beer packaging, menus, beer coasters and other in-store signage. We really hit home on the destination aspect of this brand.
Storytelling
MEET JOE, THE BREWERY MASCOT
As the expectation of a branding specialist - the direction chosen after much research and uncovering of insights was to build a brand mascot that personified everything that the brewery & brand stood for. We portrayed the mascot through content creation such as animation and storytelling.
ANIMATION
We portrayed the HJBC mascot and his story through animation. Feral Child was our partner in this creative job.
FILM
We created a series of films that followed the journey of the construction of the brewery.
(Contributors: Gareth Kaatze, Richard Wolff, Luke Bell)
Product Extensions
NOT YOUR AVERAGE JOE
The brewery did not only offer high-quality Belgian Inspired beer, it also offered a full-service restaurant with product extensions such as merchandise, brewery tours, coffee beans, memorabilia, glassware, beer coasters, gift vouchers, specialized gifts for special days, private event sections and more.
Staying Ahead of The Game
PIVOTING WHEN IT MATTERS THE MOST
Lockdowns, alcohol bans, limited allowance of customers on-site, no events - HJBC has to change its offering in order to survive. We introduced SA’s first brewery online store - delivering beer & merch nationwide + a coffee product.
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In 2019 we introduced an in-house brewery online store to the South African market. In 2020 the online store became its own 6 figure side hustle.
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We took a topographical map of the region where the brewery is situated and built our ‘brand pattern’ around this - found on our beer packaging, menus, beer coasters and other in-store signage. We really hit home on the destination aspect of this brand.
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To assist the taproom staff during busy periods we managed to keep HJBC waitrons entertained with a table talker that had a QR code in which one could scan to ‘chat to Joe’.
We set up a chatbot named ‘Joe’ who could answer info based on the brewery, go on a virtual beer tasting & even allow you to order beer for delivery.
Behind the Scenes
BUILDING THE BREWERY