Bolster Brewery Marketing with Branded Bags

Autumn is a big time for breweries in the UK. While Oktoberfest in Germany is officially over, the celebration of beer continues in the UK with different beer festivals across the nation nearly every weekend. Participating in any one of these numerous festivals is a great opportunity to promote your brewery and introduce people to your special beers. 

However, there are other cost-effective, straightforward and high-impact ways to bolster awareness for your brews and build loyalty with beer drinkers – it involves reusable branded “beer bags”.  In this post, we explain why branded bags make a strong addition to your next beer festival booth, and we share a few creative ideas for how to leverage them in your general promotional strategy and upcoming campaigns.  

Boost your Beer Brand Identity

You invest a lot of time and energy to develop and foster the look and feel of your brewery and beers. Get extra miles out of your brand with a bespoke beer bag that pays homage to your unique and playful character. You can gift these branded bags to your beer supporters in countless ways – perhaps as a thank you to the first 100 super-fans who visit your next festival booth or to anyone who joins your new brewery club or perhaps to the first 50 people who sign up to receive your brew newsletter. After all, everyone loves freebies; branded beer bags are a great way to establish a good vibe around your booth and have your highly curated brand seen throughout and long after the festival. 

Tote bags are a perfect choice for your next branded beer bag – they’re low-cost, quick, functional and fashionable, like little wearable works of art to showcase your unique beer branding. They’d make the perfect canvas for a collaboration with a local artist or to showcase a special limited-edition brew. Cooler bags are another great choice at a slightly higher price point. 

Another perk of a branded beer bag is the obvious environmental benefit; these bags will help your beer fans cut down on the plastic waste and pollution of disposable, single-use bags. Even major beer brand Carlsberg is getting in on the idea of sustainable beer products, with a goal to  create the Green Fibre Bottle, the “world’s first” beer bottle made of paper!

After the festival is over or your campaign ends, you can also sell your remaining beer bags at your brewery or in an online shop to diversify your income stream with bespoke brewery merchandise like bags, clothing, glassware and badges. Brewdog, for example, offers a “We Bleed Craft Beer” tote with dividers for placing cans, bottles and other festival or on-the-go essentials. 

Host a Competition

Another way to bolster your brewery marketing is to host an online contest to build some buzz around your brand. Social media contests are a great idea, as they reach a large number of people at a relatively low cost and with minimal time investment. Consider rewarding people who post something about your brewery – perhaps a special prize for the first 50 people who post a photo of themselves enjoying your “beer of the month” with friends or the first 25 people who share a recent post from your feed. 

You can award free branded bags to a limited number of people or, depending on your goal and your budget, for anyone who engages with your brand during a given day, week or month. (With any contest, be sure to specify a few rules, including a minimum age requirement and a limited time in which to participate.)

Beer festival organisers themselves are in on the contest action. For example, in the lead-up to the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) in August 2019, the organisers gave away tickets to people who snapped and shared photos on social media of the festival posters that hung in train stations around the city. GBBF asked people to like their page and then tag them in a post on a number of social media platforms.

Show Customer Loyalty

Beer can be heavy, awkward and bulky to carry home from festivals, breweries or the market. For customers purchasing a certain monetary amount from your festival booth or tap room, consider gifting them a branded beer bottle bag that they can use to take their beloved purchases home with them. A bottle bag is a perfect idea for point-of-sale promotions and beer festivals. And, to extend the promotion and show customer loyalty, why not offer your beer drinkers a discount if they come back to refill their bottle bag? 

Beavertown Brewery, for example, offers a line of canvas can bags (like below) to transport up to 12 cans. As a bonus, and like the BrewDog example above, the unique design of the bag holds regular or large-size cans upright to prevent the beer from getting shaken up.

Another idea to encourage customer loyalty is to thank your fans. The Indy Man Beer Con, for example, posted highlights and photos from the festival to thank the numerous customers and partners who made the event such a success. The post also included a short survey to elicit feedback from participants – everyone who completes the survey is  entered into a drawing to win two tickets to the next Indy Man beer festival and a bar tab at the beer house! You could also consider a direct outreach campaign of your own and solicit feedback from a recent beer release or event. Anyone who takes the time to complete a survey could be gifted a special bottle bag or other brewery merchandise.

There’s really no shortage of creative and impactful ways you can use beer bags and other merch to bolster your brewery brand this year. Don’t just take it from us! Given the growing interest in home and craft brewing, breweries like New Bristol are enrolling people in “brewery schools” and companies like Homebrewtique are packaging beer making supplies into giftable sets for aspiring beer makers of all levels. This one, for example, includes, everything you need (minus water) to get started brewing your own beer at home. 

We hope this post helps you start to think about ways to bolster your brewery business this year. With so many beer festivals around the corner, Autumn is the perfect time to make a few small investments in your brewery merchandise. 

What other plans do you have to get your tasty beers out there? We’d love to hear more about your brewing operations and see if we can help you introduce your beer to even more people through clever and effective promotions. Please get in touch with us today. Cheers!