New Belgium Web site no folly

Bruce Willis ordering a Fat Tire on screen.

You just can’t buy better advertising than that.

But Fort Collins-based New Belgium Brewing Co. doesn’t spend a dime on Hollywood product placement. Instead, the progressive brewer is focusing its advertising dollars on encouraging its customers to make environmentally sustainable choices and changes in their lives.

New Belgium’s “Follow Your Folly” campaign launched this month with print ads in magazines such as Men’s Journal, Outside and Esquire. The ads will be rolled out episodically, each telling a story about an individual or group whose folly is related to sustainability. Each new print ad will correspond with the introduction of a new Web page and video at www.followyour

folly.com.

New Belgium first embarked on mass marketing with the release of its “Tinkerer” television commercials in 2005. Bryan Simpson, media relations director for New Belgium, said the commercials were a success. They featured a mop-headed man – the tinkerer – who finds a dilapidated old bicycle at a yard sale and lovingly restores it to a cruiser resembling the symbol of the company’s most popular brand, Fat Tire. The commercials ended with the phrase “follow your folly.” It is that phrase that is the basis for the new campaign.

Simpson said that the company decided to take a new tack with its advertising attempts.

“We thought that print would allow us to make a more intimate connection,” he explained.

And in true New Belgium style, the ads are less focused on beer or the company than they are on the culture of environmental awareness that the brewer is trying to foster. The first print ad and Web page tell the story of New Belgium and its pursuits.

“As far as telling our sustainability story, that will be it for now,” Simpson said.

The rest of the campaign will focus on the stories that New Belgium executives spent the last year and a half collecting. Local stories include Northern Colorado resident and master composter John Anderson and his Wormbulance, and the skinny-dipping Poudre River dam protestors. Other stories include the San Francisco Bike Coalition and Resource Revival, an Oregon-based group that creates products from recycled materials. Resource Revival made the stools in the New Belgium Liquid Center (tasting room).

In total, there will be six stories, launched about two months apart.

Organic look

New Belgium worked with Denver-based Cultivator Advertising to develop the campaign. Cultivator has been working with New Belgium for a couple of years and helped to redesign their logo and packaging.

“They’d done a really successful television campaign, but they needed to do something similar in print,” explained Monte Mead, creative director at Cultivator. He said that television advertising is expensive, and doesn’t allow the company to target narrowly defined demographics.

Mead said that when he started pitching ideas to New Belgium he was careful to make it simple – mounting flats on recycled cardboard using tape rather than the industry-standard black mounting board and expertly smoothed glues. As it turned out, New Belgium’s officials really liked the organic look of the raw product.

“Anything that looks like it should be mounted on blackboard doesn’t fit,” Mead said.

That was the springboard from which Cultivator leapt into the campaign. They connected with John Johnston, a photographer and artist who works in a neighboring office.

Johnston created the pieces that will be seen in the print ads using a mix of photos and illustrations. But Mead said it was important for it not to be a dressed-up Photoshop file.

“It should be art to hang on the wall, which it does,” he said.

Johnston’s multi-tiered ads are in fact hanging on the walls in the Liquid Center. New Belgium’s team, which is used to keeping everything internal, worked very closely with Cultivator. The new Web site is actually being handled internally, and Simpson is directing and editing the videos.

Mead said that it was fun to work with New Belgium. It required the Fort Collins native to really become an extension of the company and immerse himself in its culture. He traveled with the crew to shoot the videos for the Web site and found meeting the subjects of the stories to be the most rewarding part.

“I love that this campaign is looking at ordinary people and not supermodels,” Mead said. “This is the antithesis of supermodels.”

Cultural branding

“Follow Your Folly” is a far cry from mainstream beer industry advertising, but New Belgium’s advertising methods are not completely revolutionary. Many companies are taking advantage of the fact that most people are spending more and more time in front of their computers, according to Brandweek senior reporter Mike Beirne. Beirne covers advertising in the beer, travel, candy and tobacco industries.

Beirne said that Samuel Adams, the largest U.S. craft brewer, is implementing a similar cultural branding approach. Although the messages are different, the campaigns are similar in that they discuss the culture within the company.

What sets New Belgium’s campaign apart, though, is that it is actually promoting other people and groups. While the hope is always to sell more beer, the campaign is really focused on encouraging New Belgium fans to make positive changes in their lives, according to Chief Branding Officer Greg Owsley.

New Belgium might shy away from being in the forefront of its advertising, but the company is landing other exposure opportunities – without even trying.

Silver-screen presence

New Belgium has been appearing in an increasing number of movies, most recently “Fast Food Nation.” The movie, loosely based on the book by Eric Schlosser, takes place in fictional Cody, Colorado, and focuses on elements of the fast-food industry – from slaughterhouse to fryer. The movie boasted several big names – Greg Kinnear, Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Kris Kristofferson and Bruce Willis, to name a few. New Belgium appears in the film several times, with Willis ordering up another Fat Tire in one scene.

Movie producers usually contact New Belgium to request use of the beer and brand in a film. When deciding whether or not to allow New Belgium to be used in a movie, Simpson said the company reviews the content of the movie and in what context the product will be used. New Belgium will then send the products requested, from beer to t-shirts to banners.

Director Kevin Smith, also known as the quieter half of Jay and Silent Bob, sported a New Belgium t-shirt in his Boulder-based flick “Catch and Release.” Simpson said that New Belgium is likely  to appear in a film currently being shot by director Paul Haggis, of “Crash” fame, in New Mexico.

Events for all seasonals

Placement in films is good exposure, but New Belgium has little control over the message. With its events, however, the company is able to promote its product while also promoting its culture.

One of the longest running and most popular New Belgium events is the Tour de Fat. Now in its sixth year, the cycling festival takes place in 11 cities. This year, though, there will be a new element – participants will have a chance to get a free bike from New Belgium. All they have to do is sign over their cars.

Owsley said they won’t just take any junker – it’s not a push, pull or drag deal. New Belgium will have an expert on hand to examine the vehicles. The plan is to donate the cars or sell them and donate the proceeds to local charities.

For all of its focus on sustainability and community, New Belgium’s business is definitely not suffering. The brewer continues to roll out new seasonal selections, most recently Springboard. In 2006, New Belgium produced 437,400 barrels of beer, according to Brewers Association data. That represents an 18 percent increase over 2005 production.

It looks like being environmentally friendly and the community conscience pays off.

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