Cross-Pollinating Your Audience Outside of Beer

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed something fun happening in beverage land more and more: brands are cross-pollinating audiences in ways that go beyond the usual brewery collaboration. As craft beer’s ability to be the “main event” fades, breweries are beginning to embrace its complementary role in bigger ponds quite well.

Like most things, this isn’t new, but we’re seeing new creative ways to go about it. And most importantly, you don’t have to be national or even regional to play ball, though it certainly helps. Today I’m going to share five examples, big and small, that I’ve seen over just the past few weeks, and explain why each got my attention.

Last month, I was having a long overdue beer with the founder of a new brewery. I forget the exact way he phrased his question, but he asked something along the lines of how I would build awareness and excitement around their brewery and taproom in today’s day and age, given how hyper local they are.