Craft beer marketing is a fascinating subject, and a study in contradictions. yet with over 1400 breweries pumping out their finest, attention to marketing is necessary. On the other hand, this is a business of iconoclasts. Often, craft brewery owners’ way to personal peace is to make what they want, and fuck off if you don’t like it.

For many beer fanatics, that ‘damn the torpedoes’ attitude is extremely appealing.  After all, indie brewing is one of the few Victorian-era industries still extant in the USA. In what other business can you go down to the local site of production and purchase goods directly from the source, knowing that they will vary wildly in character from producer to producer, and that this fact makes this place special? A craft brewery gives a region cultural identity, and can instill within beer lovers a pride in their small brewery that’s unmatchable by traditional branding.

And those beer lovers can be an ornery lot; they’re suspicious of big-budget glitz marketing, and emotionally invested enough to seek out new flavors and new beer producers on their own. And for all their love of the local brewery, beer geeks are notoriously brand-disloyal; A passion for beer is a passion for discovery, and for mastering the broad spectrum of tastes, hues, textures and aromas that is the new American beer scene.

So how does a small brewer appeal to the crowd that loves his or her product category the most?

It’s gotta start with the good ol’ marketing mix: product, place, price and promotion.  Is your beer any good? It can be pretty much any style and beer lovers will fall over themselves to drink it, but it had better be good. One of the most damaging ideas caused by big time marketing is that great advertising can make a shoddy product OK, and what’s really depressing is that this notion seems to be true. But it won’t work on homebrewers or beer lovers.

Next, brewers need to decide where they’re going to make their money: by expanding for wide scope like Rogue or Sierra Nevada or staying true to a fanatical local market a’ la McNeil’s in Vermont or Rochester’s own Rohrbach Brewing Company. Producers have seen success using both philosophies. Obviously, the cost of starting and running a big brewery is a heckuva lot greater than the capital outlay for a 7-barrel ski-village local. It depends on the ambition of the principals and the validity of the business plan. Many brewery folks don’t see themselves as a national corporation, and contentedly operate their ‘hippie business’ because it offers a lifestyle they love.

Brewers are fortunate in terms of price; people expect to pay more for a premium product. And for anyone who’s ever been sentenced to a nine-hour layover in a Dulles Airport bar, the $4-$6 price of a typical craft beer won’t comeas a shock.But as last year’s hop crisis demonstrated, lacking the economies of scale in purchasing means that a brewery’s prices may have to fluctuate wildly as a reaction to the price of supplies.

Promotion is the fun bit. How the hell do you advertise to the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” crowd? I think you do it through respect. You take the opposite tack of major brewing conglomerates who tout such absurdities as “cold-filtering” or “drinkability.” I don’t think this crowd can really be swayed by cutesy beer names (those really piss me off) or cartoon characters. That’s not to say you don’t produce for yourself a consistent image and identity, but trying big-time, lowest-common-denominator promotion is best left to the big boys with millionsof promotional dollars to burn.

I think you connect with people at beer festivals. You get out there in the bars and represent your brewery and your passion, one-on-one. I think, when you start getting your brewery into the black, you give back to your local community by getting involved in social causes. I think you realize that, in the eyes of the hardcore beer geek, craft brewing is the triumph of man over marketing.

Most indie brewers seem to get this. Beer is a people business again, and the market is vibrant and strong, leading me to believe that, even with its already meteoric rise, craft brewing as an industry has nowhere to go but up.

Don’t get me wrong; another decision brewers must make is whether it’s worth worrying about beer geeks’ business at all. For larger breweries, the population of full-bearded overweight unix engineers with a superior attitude and butter stains on their denin shirts is too small to cater to. But for little guys this population can make a big diference when the bills come due.

-Mark