Can a brand be both the jester and the role model? Both irreverent and relevant?

New Belgium Brewery seems to think so. New Belgium’s chief branding officer Greg Owsley spun a tale of just how far this quirky microbrewery has traveled (by bike, mind you) in its efforts to communicate about its beer and its mission of environmental sustainability. Oh yeah, and to prove how much fun they’ve had along the way.

Because as Owsley said, “If it isn’t fun, it isn’t sustainable.”

Kicking off the story was an over-the-top-in-all-the-right-ways music video, telling how New Belgium went from a homebrew first imagined on a European bike tour “Fat Tire Amber Ale“ to one of the largest private users of wind energy and the third largest craft beer brewer in the U.S. A few delicious bites from their effective and catchy marketing video include “turning waste into fuel, now that’s a powerful tool” and “cutting water in half, so you get more for your bath.”

So how did New Belgium get to this fun, funky, and deliciously, sustainably successful point? It took a big shift in how they marketed their brand as well as a lot of beers with their customers. Owsley admitted, “We thought we had the freedom, and the liver, to have a beer with every one of our customers.” While they still try to, New Belgium had to expand beyond its primary marketing strategies, which were based on beer festivals and t-shirts. Hmm, doesn’t sound too rough to me yet.

Still, in the mid-1990s, New Belgium realized that they had outgrown themselves and their marketing plan. That’s when they first introduced their widely popular “Follow Your Folly” campaign (their folly is beer, naturally), and it’s been evolving ever since they featured it a la their “Aw Shucks Plus Awesome” marketing in a 90s TV commercial. While this helped reinforce the beer maker’s earthy, independent, homespun image, focus group studies revealed that almost no one drinking their beer knew about New Belgium’s extensive commitment to environmentally sustainable practices. How to proceed?

Turns out, once New Belgium drinkers found out their clean little secret, members of a Seattle focus group said things like, “I didn’t know companies like this existed” and “Sheesh, now that I know this, they’ll be the only beer I drink.” How’s that for the power of a sustainable brand?

But how to get the word out?

Owsley emphasized that “Sustainability doesn’t have to be abstinence” but that when you’re examining your business’ impact on say, waste, climate change, and water depletion, “look at [your] ripple, not [your] splash.” True sustainability and marketing are a balancing act. New Belgium stays poised on the high wire (beer in hand) by sticking to four key adages:

1. Walk before talk. Green up your credibility for real and then tell everyone about it.
2. Admit the flaws. Transparency apparently is the new black. Be honest because you’ll get called out otherwise.
3. Go with our soul. Be authentic to your company and product’s culture.
4. Make ripples. If you’re legit, you’ll be authorized to make ripples and positively influence everyone else in the industry.

With those four maxims in hand (and a microbrew in the other), New Belgium was then able to do some pretty amazing things:

• Redefining “folly” not as a bit of foolishness but as a bit of fun and perhaps freakish freedom.
• Showing a lot of butt crack in their Skinny Dip beer ads with the combination of advertising and advocacy into “advercacy.” (The cracks came from skinny dipping river advocates raising awareness for their cause via New Belgium ads.)
• Purchasing 100% wind power for their brewery (with the admitted caveat that they use renewable energy credits to make up for the small amount of natural gas heating the kettles).
• Leveling the beer playing field with FollowYourFolly.com.
• Persuading people to turn in their cars for a bike and hosting the largest bike parade ever (the philanthropic Tour de Fat, coming to a western city near you).
• Logging more biking-not-driving miles than it takes to encircle the globe they’re trying to protect.

For a triple bottom line company like New Belgium Brewery, these accomplishments represent their real return on investment. Then again, as Homer Simpson said, “It could be the beer talking.”

~Ashley Braun, Grist.org