Episode Transcript
Don Mock 0:21
All right, Episode 115 We’re back.
Rob Broadfoot 0:23
115 115 strong.
Don Mock 0:27
Is there any numerology about 115? Is that a thing?
Rob Broadfoot 0:31
Well it’s two ones and a five.
Don Mock 0:35
Yeah, that it is on the 10 base system
Rob Broadfoot 0:38
And 11 minus five is six.
Don Mock 0:40
Yeah. I feel like we say this frequently, but we haven’t done one of these in a little while and I’m a little bit out of practice. Yeah, so we’re kind of we might have to shake off the rust on this one. So we’re not going to have five minutes of babbling nothingness. like we normally do talking about coffee or pencils or whatever, right?
Rob Broadfoot 0:58
Maybe if we crack open a beer or something will loosen up a little bit.
Don Mock 1:02
dun, there you go. And that brings us to today’s topic is advertising and design for brewskis for some beers for some spirits,
Rob Broadfoot 1:11
alcoholic beverages or non alcoholic beverages
Don Mock 1:15
that is all the rage these days, yeah, spirits. Yeah, over the last how many years it’s been a while it’s over. You know, we started to grow more and more and more our little shop and we’re working in that space, right working. And we obviously do a lot of consumer packaging. We do a lot of poultry stuff in our North Georgia friends and a lot of stuff in the grocery store but haven’t always played in the the beer aisle, the spirits aisle, things like that. And we’ve started to dabble more and more in that realm. And thought it could be kind of fun to sort of just banter about that today. Yeah. Alcoholic beverages, you know, hey, they’re all the rage. Yeah,
Rob Broadfoot 1:49
I mean, I think what’s fun about and we do a little bit of both. We’ve got certainly we work directly with clients on some beer brands, but then we also get hired out by other shops sometimes and other things just to do sort of Hired creative work on. And this sort of falls into that category somewhat. But I guess What I think is fun about working on a lot of the projects that we do in this space, is well, two things. Number one, it’s fun to do. Traditional point of sale work. And it’s an everything from package design work. To, you know, funky funds store. standees For clings.
Don Mock 2:31
in store merchandising. Feels like it’s kind of old school. Like it’s a dinosaur like everybody, like, years and years ago. I mean, when we used to work on Kellogg’s we would do this kind of stuff all the time, like in the grocery store. Right? But retail environments, not that they’re dying. But I mean, man, it’s impossible to get a sign in a Walmart, everything’s so locked down. Right. But the liquor store
Rob Broadfoot 2:50
the liquor store is ripe with
Don Mock 2:53
it is still the wild funhouse in there. Yeah. the only the only challenge honestly, in the liquor store is walking through the liquor store, because man, those things are packed. Yeah, you
Rob Broadfoot 3:02
got stacks of things everywhere, everywhere standies.
Don Mock 3:06
I mean, you got things hanging from the ceilings, you know, there might be an inflatable over in the corner, there’s the most ridiculous
Rob Broadfoot 3:12
Yeah, I feel like there’s like an inflatable palm tree by Corona.
Don Mock 3:17
There Danglars,
Rob Broadfoot 3:18
Malibu rum, you know, whatever,
Don Mock 3:20
There’s things hanging from the ceiling. I mean, they’re the you know, they do the display, but like, the giant bottle of the product over i mean, they’re just literally the wild west of in store merchandising, which is so crazy.
Rob Broadfoot 3:31
And I wonder why that is? Like, I don’t know that there’s any real rhyme or reason for that.
Don Mock 3:37
For why liquor stores are so crazy
Rob Broadfoot 3:40
with merchandising
Don Mock 3:43
I don’t know, I feel like again, I might be speaking out of turn here. But you know, you do have different rules and regulations per state, right, in terms of, can they both be in the same store? Could they be in grocery stores, things like that? Right? So it isn’t like there’s a national liquor store brand, like a Walmart or a Target or whatever, where it’s totally locked down and corporate controlled. So you may have like, here, like got greens, you got chains like that. Right. But I think that because of that, kind of like, What we talked about Barnes and Noble, a bunch of podcasts back, right. There’s kind of just local autonomy to do whatever you want to do in your own store.
Rob Broadfoot 4:21
Owners control whatever.
Don Mock 4:22
Yeah, yeah. And and these big brands, even, you know, well known vodka brands, well known liquor brands that have been around for 30,60 years. You know, they’ll still throw lots of money at a launch or LTL. Right? Like, oh, this is the flavor of the summer. Here’s, Here’s all the stuff that goes with it. Right.
Rob Broadfoot 4:39
But you not only have the liquor, you know, producers, right, the manufacturers and the producers, they had the distributors. And the distributors play a huge role in that too, because
Don Mock 4:50
the gatekeepers,
Rob Broadfoot 4:51
everybody has a invested interest in pushing the brand as much as possible. So the distributors will. They’re oftentimes the ones that foot the bill on a lot of the in store merchandising stuff you
Don Mock 5:00
absolutely Yeah. So I mean, we’ll do like a call it a tool set for a brand for either a promotion hey win something win a trip somewhere win a you know, VIP experience with musical artists or whatever you know. And man, we will rock out every conceivable version of point of sale for everything from a small little channelstrip to like to like a push pull sign for the door. Literally the front door refrigerator door stickers. I mean
Rob Broadfoot 5:31
Yeah. Danglars wobbler
Don Mock 5:33
Yeah, and then these but all the way up to like big, like 80 inch wide, you know, 100 inch tall, like, giant constructed out of cardboard. Yeah, whatever. Like, like things. It’s like, oh, man, and then you know, hey, you’re supposed to stack call I don’t know What is a 50 cases of What yeah, something or whatever inside this display, kind of like think about your Super Bowl display for Coca Cola. They got the big wall of all right, you know, right, right. Like, I mean, yeah, we’ll do all that. I mean, it is everything from the smallest little, you know, three by three inch little sticker to like gigantic in store merchandise, which is pretty fun.
Rob Broadfoot 6:07
It’s super fun. Yeah, it’s super fun. We’ll walk through we’ll talk about one of our local clients. And to kind of walk through a little bit of a case study. So Atlanta folks probably have heard or tasted or enjoy often. Scofflaw, right. Scofflaw, local,
Don Mock 6:25
hopefully all three of those things. Right?
Rob Broadfoot 6:27
That’s right. So they are a local Atlanta. Born brewery down here in town. We’ve got a few different locations there. Actually now the largest independent brewery in the state of Georgia. Correct?
Don Mock 6:39
Correct. Because our friend Sweetwater sold
Rob Broadfoot 6:41
our friends at Sweetwater sold to a Canadian marijuana company.
Don Mock 6:46
Yeah, Canadian cannabis company,
Rob Broadfoot 6:47
a cannabis cannabis company. So anyway, Scofflaw now moves into the P-1
Don Mock 6:52
We’re going to call it pole position. Push Push, push, push.
Yeah. Box. Push Push box box. Okay. Yeah.
Little inside…
Rob Broadfoot 7:02
Stop talking and let me drive.
Don Mock 7:05
Okay. I love how he says, okay, like, five seconds later. He’s like, Okay, we’re gonna need you too buck buck
Rob Broadfoot 7:12
what’s great about it too and we’ll fill in everybody we’re referencing Formula 1 Drive to survive on Netflix What’s so funny about it is they are unlike every other sport, where when you hear like, you know, mic football players or baseball coaches wherever else it’s the most foul language for me when everyone’s so polite. It’s often please box, please
Don Mock 7:38
Yeah, yeah but it’s short. Snippets. I feel like because those guys are driving What 200 miles an hour in crazy, and like you can’t give a verbose.
Rob Broadfoot 7:52
You can’t be distracted.
Don Mock 7:53
Yeah, they need bite sized nuggets of information like just baby miniature sentences, right? Because the concentration there is out of control. All right, yeah. So anyway, anyway, so Scofflaw has moved into p-1 in qualifying, has moved
Rob Broadfoot 8:05
Scofflaw has moved into p-1 . And they came to us and because of the work that we’ve done with Sweetwater in the past, they liked What we did. So they sort of approached us and said, Hey, we’ve got, you know, two of our signature brews, which is their base. They’re both IPAs. This one’s called their basement and one’s called their pug. Yeah, IPA. And they said, Hey, our two signature brews are available in 16 ounce cans right as opposed to your basic standard. They’re also available in 12 ounce cans, but we can them in 16 ounce cans. They’ve been in the marketplace. But we want to refresh that. And we want to let people know about these big cans. And the fact that generally speaking, you can get them for the price of other competitors 12oz cans. So it’s a price play.
Don Mock 8:57
Yeah. More beer for the same amount
Rob Broadfoot 9:00
more beer for the same amount and really good beer
Don Mock 9:02
Yeah delicious.
Rob Broadfoot 9:04
So they came to us and they said, Hey, we want to kind of do a campaign around this idea of 33% more. Right. And so they sell the 12 packs of the 16 ounce cans. And so we we we concepted a bunch of directions, but one of the ideas that we came up with that. That ended up sort of going going with was this idea of okay, well you’ve got these, you’ve got these big cans. And you think of tall boys, right? the traditional 16 ounce moniker, is a tall boy. Well, Scofflaws branding, if you’re not familiar with it, is kind of founded upon this whole idea of this goat. And they have this crazy goat character. It’s on their cans.
Don Mock 9:53
The goat this is kind of like how Sweetwater got the fish I mean, I hate to simplify it like that, but they’ve always had
Rob Broadfoot 9:59
Yeah, it’s kind of a renegate goat, if you’ve ever go to the brewery which you should, it’s really cool, they got a lot of great outdoor space and event space. It’s a lot of fun. But yeah, they’ve got the character goat in there and all the scope paintings everywhere.
Don Mock 10:12
There’s kind of goat stuff everywhere. It’s it’s kind of part of the brand, MailChimp got the monkey, you know, the chimpanzee through I mean, they’ve got their goat. That’s their jam.
Rob Broadfoot 10:20
So we kind of leaned into that, and decided, hey, why don’t you call the 16 ounce cans, the big goat cans, so lean into your original branding And the goat obviously, greatest of all time, that’s got a lot of different things going on. But we said hey, Why Don’t We name these things The big goat cans. And that’s sort of the idea that we that visually that we kind of ran with. And then we did a whole series of lines around 33% More 33% More beer envy. We can we did Is another line.
Don Mock 10:55
That’s our pack now I believe right
Rob Broadfoot 10:57
it’s our pack Yeah. And so we did a whole slew and it’s super bright colors. It’s leveraging their their their brand colors that the green and sort of the orange orange of the of the pug. And the basement IPA and just kind of leaned into that and it’s kind of super over the top and super fun. And they they we did five foot standees we count our cards. We did a massive floor
Is humongous. It’s gigantic.
we did. What else do we do refrigerator stickers. For in the store everything else so super exciting. It’s a lot of fun. We got to redo the packaging
Don Mock 11:36
Yeah I was gonna say we also did the can, no, the carton
Rob Broadfoot 11:39
the carton. we updated the can. We did a little bit of tweaking the can a little bit. So anyway, super fun sweet of of merchandise, and merchandising that is about to hit these stores
Don Mock 11:51
What’s your favorite aspect of working in this kind of vertical working in liquor and, and beer and whatnot?
Rob Broadfoot 11:58
I don’t know. My favorite thing about it, but also, What makes it the most difficult, okay, is that you kind of have license to just do whatever you want. Right? I mean, I think I think in a lot of ways, I mean, you obviously have parameters, right? In this case, it was 16 ounce cans we want to talk about as being more beer for less money. Well, you have certain parameters. It’s an industry that allows you to kind of do whatever you want in terms of tone and attitude, and conceptual development and everything else, which is difficult, because it’s like
Don Mock 12:34
a wide open camp.
Rob Broadfoot 12:35
I’ve got a blank sheet of paper. And I can do anything I want. But it’s also fun because of that, because you can you can there’s no such thing as too wacky.
Don Mock 12:45
yeah. Which makes the first round presentation to clients, I think, really exciting. Because yeah, because you it’s not like, Hey, Here’s four versions within the same sandbox, right? You know What I mean? Like, Here’s, Here’s for the same sandbox is just kind of slightly different. It’s like, Here’s the sandbox. Here’s a beach ball. Here’s, Here’s a dolphin, you know, and Here’s the seagull like they’re all so you can really try a lot of different things and sort of find out What that correct tone is.
Rob Broadfoot 13:10
And they’re also starting from a really good place, right? they’ve got like, especially the Scofflaw they got a great brand foundation
Don Mock 13:17
Yeah Scofflaw is awesome.
Rob Broadfoot 13:18
And a lot of great tools from the brand side to work with. Right. Including the goats. And we did everything for them. We’ve done so also in this concept. We told them they need to have goat parties. They need to have petting zoo or petting brew parties as we called them at the brewery where they bring in goats.
Don Mock 13:37
Yeah, their space is fantastic. So it is definitely a fun destination to go to. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a fun. It’s a fun, I think my favorite not that you’re asking about it but I think my favorite is, it kind of reminds me of like, when we first got in this industry, and how the flow of projects work. So by that, I mean, we do a lot of ideating. And we do a lot of concepting. And we still do a lot of sketching, you’re still a lot of that first round drawing, as you’d like to call it, right? Which I think, you know, you get to kind of rapid prototyping faster, right? And that’s like, hey, we did a tasters kit for one of those whisky and, you know, and so it was a lot of like, hey, you know, mechanical design, but still very loose in terms of like designing the sketching, Here’s how it can work, right? So there is I mean, everything now is a race to, you know, final production and, you know, a lot of first round presentations even from design methodology, right? It’s still very computer generated. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but like, Hey, you’re on Illustrator and Photoshop, you’re doing whatever, you know, you’re never going to show a client, a first round logo presentation of all sketches anymore, it’s all like, you know, mechanically designed, right, right. But I think this industry is so much fun because you still have that loose. I mean, we’re doing spots for a vodka company right now. And it’s still it’s not even storyboarded. You don’t I mean, it’s still very much narrative.
Rob Broadfoot 15:06
Just ideas. It’s almost white paper.
Don Mock 15:08
Yeah. Which still is like you still get that fun round one theater of the mind. Everybody buys in, and then you slowly start to refine. And then yeah, we get to like, brand standards, and you got to use this typeface and you know, we’ll get to all that stuff, you know, but I think that’s still my favorite part of working in this sort of vertical is, is that wide open spaces, and that that foundational drawing and sketching and really ideating
Rob Broadfoot 15:31
and it’s also too like, who in this industry doesn’t want to work on that type of alcohol client.
Don Mock 15:39
Yeah, it’s fun,
Rob Broadfoot 15:39
great industry. I mean, there are ton of fun industries to work with but it kind of takes you out of the stuff you you maybe typically do and you get to do something super crazy and wacky and fun. Almost like you were back in school. But then it becomes real and you get to walk around the grocery store and go oh, my gosh, look at that. We did that and you get to see it out in the wild as we say.
Don Mock 15:59
Yeah, I still get a kick anytime we see anything in the wild. I just love it. That never gets old, that literally never gets old.
Rob Broadfoot 16:05
And the free beer. Our good friends at Scofflaw were kind enough to do inspirational beers. From time to time. That is helpful.
Don Mock 16:16
It’s yeah, it gets you through that Friday afternoon. concepting session at the end of the day, right.
Rob Broadfoot 16:21
Not all clients want to do trade deals. Yeah. Yeah.
Don Mock 16:26
Yeah. The beer is fun. Yeah. And it’s a good product. So yeah, What anything you don’t like about working in just just for fun? I need sort of negatives on this on the side of life. It’s kind of a weird turn. I can’t really think about it. I’m just I’m just playing devil’s advocate is where I’m where I’m at, you know?
Rob Broadfoot 16:46
I need to be careful here. I think that and this is not this is not so
Don Mock 16:56
not unique to this industry,
Rob Broadfoot 16:57
not unique to this industry. But I think that, that and this and this is maybe just as sort of a general topic, but I think more and more with the with the advance of technology. And I’m talking about AI, I’m talking about iPhones, I’m talking about everything. I think some clients have this, this, this this way of thinking that oh, it it’s easy to generate stuff.
Don Mock 17:28
Okay. Got it. Right.
Rob Broadfoot 17:30
You know What I mean? and it’s true, it is it is easier to generate things, generally speaking these days. But sometimes I think that, you know, it’s, Hey, in this image, it’s move this here and take this there and make the background this instead of that Whoa, wait. Wait a minute.
Don Mock 17:51
Hold on a second here.
Rob Broadfoot 17:52
Hold on a second. Yeah. So I think that that and that’s just kind of a general industry thing that I think probably if you talk to 99% of agencies out there, they would tell you the same thing. Client asks, some times are moving more quickly, then
Don Mock 18:09
Then their own machine,Yeah. What’s interesting is like not dissimilar to Coca Cola, right? We’ll pick on that, you know, like, hey, the formula hasn’t changed, right? That’s not you know, What they do is they change their packaging ever, you know, the brands change their packaging. Now establish brands like that, right. And I think kind of What you’re alluding to is each brand, you know, you’ll have a brand, that’s a tequila and soda brand, you’ll have a brand that’s a vodka brand, you’ll have a you know, and, you know, we’ll have a library of all those brand assets for those specific brands. It’s, hey, we got to do advertising and trade publications, we got to advertise the 711. We got I mean, there’s all this sort of all this stuff. Right? Well, their machine of updating the the packaging itself, so, so far outpaces the rest of their brand library, we are constantly caught in a state of updating and retouching existing assets to What is currently going to be on shelf. And it is fascinating in that, you know, will we, you know, before the end of the year, we wrapped up in April, May June promotion for this year. Right. So, so from a brand perspective, and this is not unique, you know, but like brand managers, agencies, us, we’re all soured of everything six months before it even hits the market.
Rob Broadfoot 18:17
Right
Don Mock 18:20
You know What I mean? Like, like, we’re so far ahead of time, right? So it does make some of those challenges of like, oh, well, this year, we’re already be working on next year stuff. But, you know, we’ve rebranded this so we’ve changed that formulation, or we don’t use those brand assets anymore. And this and that, you know What I mean? So you have these multiple paths of like, you know, you’re working on something now for the future, but you have immediate needs, which need to be for today, but then you also have the stuff that’s going to be ready for six months from now, which does, it does make the industry kooky. And there’s a lot of vendors and moving pieces and parts, you know What I mean? Because they’re all national brand, right? So I mean, it’s going all over the place and printers and partnerships
Rob Broadfoot 20:01
I think it’s also too like like if I think about specific examples and it’s like and this this happens a lot you know it used to be you’ve heard the term well fix it in post
Don Mock 20:13
yeah. Oh yeah
Rob Broadfoot 20:14
I mean that’s been around forever it’s always been oh just fix it in post right yeah. Well now we’re hearing that more and more and more and more which is oh, we went out and did a photo shoot that we may or may not have been involved in And we get everything back and it’s here it is. And then the client says, Well, I want this this this this this and you go
Don Mock 20:35
why didn’t you shoot it that way?
Rob Broadfoot 20:36
why didn’t shoot it that way? Oh, I’ll just fix it in post ,
Don Mock 20:38
Yeah, yeah, it’s not easy to change that glass that the drink is actually in like What are you talking about
Rob Broadfoot 20:46
and again, I think that’s because technology in this new landscape of AI and all of these things that people get on your phone all these things that I think there’s this misbelief that you can just hit a button and change anything you want.
Don Mock 21:03
Yeah. It still is fun. It’s fun to have these this roster of clients on the agency side though, you know, and again, not that I don’t love working in you know, working in healthcare is super fun. You know, it’s it’s emerging biological technologies that are repairing your body and you know, you get these you’re like, What in the this is amazing, you know, like, you’re
Rob Broadfoot 21:22
not as much fun as beer
Don Mock 21:23
No, it’s not as much fun as beer but that’s What makes the beer even more fun, though. Right? Is that hey, we’re doing this we’re working on this college university. We’re working on doing different things right. And then adding in Oh, yeah, we got some beer.
Rob Broadfoot 21:38
Variety keeps it interesting. You’ll never be a niche agency. No That won’t happen
Don Mock 21:43
Absolutely not. Well, well, this is a rousing What is this a 21 minute ad for Scofflaw.
Rob Broadfoot 21:48
There you go
Don Mock 21:49
Go get yourself some Scofflaw.
Rob Broadfoot 21:50
Yeah. Hit the brewery over on MacArthur.
Don Mock 21:53
Yeah, do us a solid and get a get a 12 pack of big goats cans.
Rob Broadfoot 21:56
big goat cans coming soon to a liquor store and a grocery store near you. You can’t miss it and it’s delicious.
Don Mock 22:05
Yeah, for sure. All right. Where can everybody find us Rob?
Rob Broadfoot 22:09
When we’re not perusing the beer aisle at our local Publix. You can find us here in the shop or online of course at www.mocktheagency.com. And then on all the socials, we are all the rage on the socials @mocktheagency. So you’ll find us there as well. All right Cheers, everybody.
Don Mock 22:28
Thanks everybody.
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