Okay, so yes, CraftGeer is an apparel and glassware company specifically for the craft-beer-loving community; but if we weren't actually passionate members of that craft-beer-loving community ourselves, we'd be nothing more than frauds - right?
So today's marriage of two things that I have passion for (NJ Craft Beer and branding), it inspired a CraftGeer Blog blog post which has little or nothing to actually do with CraftGeer or CraftGeer.com.
So when I saw this tweet today,
it was needless to say that even before clicking the link, I had preconceived ideas of the direction that Kane Brewing would be moving towards with the new logo. My gut told me that they would be making a move to further remove the brand from everything that is great right now in the craft beer community. My gut told me they would be moving to establish the look and feel of an "ultra-premium brand." Now don't get me wrong, everything coming out of the tanks in Ocean County is screaming for the craft beer world to pay attention to Kane, but in the three seconds that it took to load the Facebook post where their new logo would be revealed, I was afraid the branding was headed in a direction that would turn off the rank and file of the craft beer community in an effort to appeal to the ever-growing crowd of those who are recent wine converts - I am happy to say, I was wrong.
Kane Brewing did exactly the opposite of what I expected. They cleaned up, simplified and made the logo simply awesome. Personally, I always felt that Kane had a bit of an identity problem, something about the branding always made me feel like the only packaging it belonged in was 750ml, cork and cage bottles. The though of Head High IPA in cans just didn't seem to work. Even as recently as a few weeks ago, when talking about the NJ brewing scene with someone, and focussing mostly on Kane and Carton, I found myself referring to one of the two as the more fun, and more widely appealing brand - I feel like this re-brand can really transform that image.
I look forward to seeing what gets rolled out from Kane Brewing over the next few weeks, and we start to see the look and feel of the new labels and such. All that being said, whenever events of the day call for a positive post on New Jersey Craft Beer, (like Cube said) it was a good day.
And the last thing I'll leave you with is a look at just how good, the two young giants on the New Jersey craft beer scene (Kane Brewing and Carton Brewing) look next to each other. Trust me, you'll be hearing a lot more from these two in the years to come.
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