Firestone Walker Brewing’s Dustin Hinz on tapping beer and sports fans through CTV

Firestone Walker Brewing Company’s CMO says connected TV has made it easier to reach its sports-loving customers.   Episode Transcript Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio. Damian (00:01): I'm Damian Fowler. Ilyse (00:02): And I'm Ilyse Liffreing. Damian (00:03): This week we're really excited to talk with Dustin Hinz, the Chief marketing officer of Firestone Walker Brewing the craft brewery based in California. Ilyse (00:12): Dustin has been the chief marketer at Firestone for almost six years. He's an award-winning marketer who knows how to build a culturally relevant brand. Damian (00:21): Also, he's a musician and he helped build Guitar Center into that powerhouse brand It is today. He worked there for 17 years and you can ask any guitarist about Guitar Center and its Importance. And then he was an Ernie Ball music man, which is famous for its guitar strings, which I love. I'm curious though, Ilyse, do you play the guitar? Ilyse (00:40): I wish, but Okay. Damian, we're here to talk beer and how to market it in a crowded marketplace. So let's begin. So Dustin, can you tell us a little bit about Firestone and the brand 805? It seems it really has a West Coast vibe just like me. I'm from the West coast so I can see that. I feel it. Dustin (01:04): Firestone Walker is the culmination of David Walker and Adam Firestone's love for beer. And they met back in the nineties when David fell in love with Adam's sister and there's great stories about that. And then they found they had this mutual love for beer and the central coast of California. David being an expat in British and Adam being a Californian, they founded this amazing brewery on the central coast and really focused on just a few craft beers. DBA was their first beer and then Union Jack and there was a lot of craft was sort of an early movement. And then back in 2012 they stumbled upon this idea of 8 0 5 and 8 0 5 is the area code for the big swath of the Central coast, a big piece of California all the way down to Ventura County where actually I grew up. We like to say that the goal of 8 0 5 is to be the most globally recognized, regionally available beer in the world. Ilyse (02:03): Very cool. But there are a lot of beers out there, even craft beers. What would you say is the point of differentiation? Is it the taste? Is it the West coast vibes? What would you say? Dustin (02:15): I think the biggest point of differentiation in beer is the brand position. Obviously great brand position and great marketing is not going to solve a lousy product, so you got to have amazing product and we're trying to focus on being odds of the evens and really investing in our own legend and trying to stand for something and be the alternative choice. And thankfully beer is so big and there's so much opportunity that you can carve out a pretty nice size of the pie for yourself if you want to focus on being the alternative premium choice. Damian (02:43): One of things that you just said about the importance of marketing and how marketing can drive the business seems key to this. Is there anything that you could point us to that you'd say, this was the moment where I created brand awareness above and beyond or something like that? Dustin (03:05): The first one with the traditional 8 0 5, the black can I was very lucky to inherit five and a half years ago a slogan called Properly Chill and Properly Chill sort of was the slogan for this idea that life on the central coast was a little different, right? And what we did last year and then going into this year, and I believe that this is going to come out right around this new campaign is going to drop, is this idea telling the story of our brand through the lens of our customer. We have this amazing roster of ambassadors, we call them Authentico and eight oh five Authentico and Professional surfers, motocross Riders, boxers, MMA, fighters, artists, tattoo artists, you name it, it spans the spectrum. There's over 50 of them and they kind of cover every single different customer group that we believe the brand represents and we tell the story of that brand through those consumers or through those athletes. (04:06): And then a couple other examples were what we did was Summer of Cervesa when we launched the extension of 8 0 5, the first extension after 10 years, which was a Mexican lagger themed version of 8 0 5 with a little bit of lime in it. And the idea at the time was when you were looking at the marketplace, Mexican laggers were really on the rise. Corona obviously as an incredible background. Modelo has now at this point become the number one brand in the US surpassing Bud Light and Consumers were definitely reaching for this idea of sort of an escapism beer. So when we launched the campaign with summer survey, so we realized that we had to do something to stand out and create some differentiation between 8 0 5 blonde and 8 0 5. And so the 8 0 5 cervesa campaign was the first time we ever showed the product in color. 8 0 5 has been black and white since its inception in 2012. And with 8 0 5 Cervesa was the first time we ever put the product in color in the advertising. And it was a game changer. I mean, we sales went from moderately successful to up 20% pretty consistently because we were able to create that differentiation in the idea that Cervesa was a light and refreshing product. Damian (05:24): Wow, I love that just by adding color. But it is interesting that you started out in black and white as a kind of campaign. Why black and white? Dustin (05:32): I think they realized they needed to do something different to stand out back then. And trust me, it is a conversation pretty regularly when we're working on new ideas of, there is a lot of consternation around the idea of how do we maintain the brand identity and not stray from it because we want to be timeless, not timely. So we're very, very focused on, hey, every decision we make is going to have an impact a decade from now, two decades from now. Because the greatest brands in beer are multi-generational. Ilyse (06:02): Totally. And I know we talked about this earlier because it can be really difficult to market alcohol products, especially on platforms like social media where there are age roadblocks. What are the channels that you decided to lean into for these campaigns and are there any that you're experimenting with now? Dustin (06:24): I'd say at-home is a good third of our total media investment and then a big shift to TV about two years ago. And with connected TV platforms continuing to become more robust, it's made it a hell of a lot easier for us to get more geo-targeted because I think that spray and prey doesn't work when you're a regional brand and you want to get really focused on zip codes and you want to try to drive measurement. And so connected TV has been huge for us and whether that's through our partnerships with the World Surf League or we're just doing a sports our brand, what we know though is that from all of our consumer data is that a huge percentage of our customers are sports fans. They watch a lot of football, they watch a lot of baseball. So what we do is we take our brand to those channels and through partnerships like ESPN, we've been able to really connect with consumers and drive some really nice measurable lift for the brand. You're watching a sports game and you're going to see beer brand X or insurance brand X with an athlete for that sport. And then you see our spot, which might have a bull rider in it or a surfer or a motocross rider, and it just stands out Ilyse (07:33): With your brands embrace of sports and kind of that measurement piece of CTV, you must love that more live sports are coming into the connected TV space. Dustin (07:47): I think the beneficiaries of this sort of democratization of content and it's making things more competitive. So as you see the Disney Network, Hulu, ESPN, or you go to YouTube TV and some of the other platforms that are continuing to open up, it makes it really easy to be competitive in the space or to at least have a voice. I think our team's been really good at identifying those opportunities, proving the efficacy of those investments so that we can continue to do them. Damian (08:15): You hinted at something about the seasonality of marketing and I'm kind of interested in that as a marketer of beer and I guess in lots of ways, as you said, you're kind of marketing lifestyle, you have associations with surfers and athletes and the summer. I'm curious how often you think about the need to refresh campaigns and how do you keep them relevant to the culture cultural moment? Dustin (08:42): Yeah, great question. You definitely have to, in beer, especially with the retail partners, you need to be seasonal. I spent the first 20 years of my career on the music side as a retailer, so I know what retailers want. They're going to want, Hey, it's Memorial Day, I'm going to have a display in my store for a week and a half, two weeks. It better fit the theme of Memorial Day. Now how you do that, you can do that without just stars and stripes. There's other ways to do that, but the I idea of escapism and patriotism to a degree, but when you look at the retail calendar, there are a myriad, there's like 16 major temples that you have to win. So our team is definitely working to make sure that we're taking the overall thematic of our brand and pulling that down into those temples. (09:33): And that fits the larger brand story because obviously you don't want to have 16 different TV spots throughout the year. So we'll have several different campaigns throughout the year, but then those drop down into Cinco de Mayo or Day of the Dead or 4th of July. So you have to, depending on the channel that we're in, yeah, some stuff has to be far more granular to make sure that it's serving the need of that retailer or the desire of that retailer, and as well as making sure that we're still maintaining the brand identity that we want to have. While everybody else does Super Bowl and does football, we're doing the World Surf League pipeline, which is the Super Bowl of surf, so is the official beer of the WSL when everyone's doing Super Bowl, we're doing surfing. Damian (10:10): Now, Dustin listeners can't see this, but I know behind you you've got some fantastic vintage guitars there, which I wanted. I know that you are a musician and before you worked at 8 0 5, you worked as a marketer in the music industry, including for Ernie Ball, music Man and Guitar Center. And I'm kind of interested in the kind of synergies that you might have found there between marketing to musicians and the kind of now the position you're in now marketing beer. Dustin (10:42): It's really sort of a story of serendipity. I got my first guitar when I was 14 years old and it sort of changed my life. Music just bordered became this obsession and it's what I wanted to do, started a band and typical story, didn't go to college, was like college, I'm going to be in a band, mom, what are you talking about? So I begged her at the time she was working, she was the executive assistant to the CEO O of Guitar Center back in the nineties when they were still a small company. And I said, Hey, just give me a job in the mail room or something, and so just give me the summer. Let me prove to you that my band can be in great before I have to go to college. And so she got me a job in the mail room and said, three months, that's it. And three months turned into 18 years. (11:35): I worked my way up to vice president and that typical age old story. But what I found really early on when I got there was, and I remember there was a moment, I was there a couple of months working in the mail room, excited in the mail room is right next to the marketing department and there was a great VP of marketing. It was Mike. I still talk to him to this day, 20 something years later. He always says, his joke is, you're the best hire I ever made. But I remember looking at the marketing materials and saying to the guys like, Hey, we're not marketing to, I'm the customer. Why don't you talk to me? We should change the way that we talk to the customers because this doesn't make sense. I'm the customer, I don't want to read this. So I pitched him some ideas and he's like, yeah, that's a great idea. You want a job in marketing? (12:18): And I went from $4 and 50 cents an hour to $9 an hour. I thought it was rich. I'm 18 years old. And I started that journey. And I think what I realized really early on, and what was great about Guitar Center was that our mission was to mint new customers. We realized early on through a great visionary, CEO, we had Marty Albertson was that we had to make sure that we were creating musicians. There wasn't a lot of 'em. When you think about the population of the world, it think it's like 2% our musicians. So if you want to continue to sell guitars and you want to continue to sell instruments, you've got to inspire people to want to play music. So our mission became taking this great feeling and propelling that and perpetuating it to get more people excited about it. And we became a platform for artists and creating, over the course of my 20 years, I got to create TV shows and write documentaries and make slashes documentary. (13:09): I got to things that you would only dream of when you were a kid to make art with other artists that inspired the world. And I think the common thread through all of that was that great marketing, great brands stand for something clear and enduring. I'm very, very lucky that as a songwriter and a musician early on, that I found this extension of that creative process to sort of keep me inspired. I mean marketing in a lot of ways, your writers, your songwriters, your creatives, and you get to do that while also tackling, for me at least the necessary evil of lift analysis, analytics and Damian (13:46): Some of those things that come with the business. Our musicians have to be marketers these days anyway. Right. Ilyse (13:50): That's very true. And that 2%, we at least have two in our miss because Damian's a musician as well. But yeah, it's so interesting that you talk about that area of the population and in some ways it's almost harder to reach those very niche communities. Dustin (14:09): Yeah, there's that great quote. I don't know if it came from Nike, it was probably Nike, but what's that speak to the core loud enough that everyone else can hear? I mean, I think that's been a mission of music. I mean, remember the indie movement or the punk movement, it was like everybody didn't want to be mainstream, and it was just like, do this thing, own your audience. And then what happens is the cool thing, everybody wants to sit at the cool table. Everybody wants to be a part of the movement, but you can't market to the people that want to be in the movement. You have to market to the people who have started the movement, and then what happens is then you can maintain some credibility. Damian (14:40): I'm just curious to get your high level perspective on what do you think needs to change in the ad marketplace today, which as we all know, is very much digital programmatic. Dustin (14:52): I think product placement right now, especially on podcasts, is just incredibly oversaturated. And I understand that when you've got a major budget and you're moving money around and you're trying to do everything you can to drive eyeballs, but I have this conversation all the time with the agency. I'm not interested in the most amount of eyeballs. I want the right ones. And when I look at a podcast and I just see energy drinks on tables and then right behind it, I see a Starbucks cup and the cans aren't open, I just think there's too much of that going on. To me, there's not real connections. So I think one of the things for me that's just unfortunate is because of the amount of money and the amount of ad money that's available and it's all moving from different platforms, is that sort of approach has created, I think a really high level of high bar for entry into some of these categories. (15:40): The expectations of money that are tied to some of these opportunities are so overblown. So I think that to me, that's always been something that I've always struggled with that I always hope is going to work itself out and well. I think that you go through ebbs and flows, especially when times get tough, people will cut back on their marketing, they cut back on sponsorships, and that's when opportunities open up. And if you're smart and you manage your money effectively and you have dollars, when other brands are carving back, that's when you can start to find really interesting opportunities. But for me, yeah, influencer marketing, product seating, I've never been excited about it. One of the things that we say all the time at Firestone Walker is keep the main thing, the main thing. And by doing that, we put on ourselves from chasing too many squirrels in the backyard. Ilyse (16:30): I love that. Dustin (16:31): Yeah. Ilyse (16:32): Is there anything you are obsessed with figuring out right now? Dustin (16:35): I mean, we sell millions of cases of beer and our first party data. We've done an amazing job of our first party data, emails building customer attention, but there is this weird thing with social, and I'm just obsessed with trying to figure out what it is. And our agency's got great relationships with meta and these platforms, and nobody, one can seem to give me the answer of what is happening on the backend within the algorithms that is preventing some of the biggest brands in the world with tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of consumers. This ability to create real audiences on these platforms, because we live in a world now where all content is consumed through just a few channels. When you think about YouTube, whatever happens with TikTok, Instagram Meta, et cetera, there's a only handful of channels where a majority of all of the content consumption is taking place. (17:31): And if every single one of those has a toll booth between you and your customer, but then there's also a filter that is preventing you from really building your audience. I'm obsessed with trying to figure that out. If we do believe in this idea of the zeitgeist and that culture matters and that brands stand for something clear and enduring, the world is going to continue and down this digital path. And sure, point of sale and billboards and TV advertising are great ways to tell people about your brand, but it is the way to get your arms around them. It's going to be on these platforms and the ones that are coming. And I think that's what the industry as a whole is always the industry as a whole struggles with this. And I think it can be dangerous in the sense that you over obsess it and then you put too much money into like, well, I got to grow followers, or I got to grow my audience. Versus like, well, I just got to drive, drive affinity in purchase intent. And so that's, I think the balance of how do we focus on stuffing the funnel, creating a tremendous amount of energy for our brands. The right partnerships is omnipresent in the right cultural segments that we want to be in, but at the same time try to figure out how we can expand our tent and get more people into it. Damian (18:46): Wow. Ali, I love that conversation with Dustin. I mean, it's not every day you get to talk to somebody who's a musician and a marketer and who's able to tie both of those things together so well as he did. But what was the standout thing to you that he said? Ilyse (19:02): I think what really stuck out was kind of playing how Firestone and Dustin kind of play that fine line of keeping consistent, but also not being too rigid and trying new things with customers. I know with 9,000 plus breweries, it's kind of crazy that there's so much competition to stick out and beer brands have to stick out. But what he said was really interesting about staying consistent with an agency and measurement and really trying to find, making sure that what you're making art essentially actually makes sense. Damian (19:45): Yeah, I agree with you and I feel like one of the most powerful things he said to me was when he was at Guitar Center, when he was there for 17 years, his vision was to mint new musicians and identifying that only 2% of the world population, 2%, I think he said musicians. So you have to inspire more people to want to create music. And taking that sort of core philosophy and applying it to his current role at 8 0 5 seems to be something that's driving him as a mission driven marketer. I think as he said, great brands have to stand for something enduring. So in that regard, I think he's really smart, and to do this at this cultural moment where there's so much fragmentation, that is one way to help him clear through all the clutter and stay focused. Ilyse (20:30): Yeah, I think one of my favorite quotes too was like keep the main thing, the main thing, and that keeps us basically from chasing those squirrels. Damian (20:44): That's it for this edition of The Current Podcast. I'm Ilyse, and I'm Damian, and we'll see you next time.