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Big Beer Brands Embrace Heritage and Provenance

Three big beer brands employ packaging designs that capitalize on those characteristics drawing millennials to craft beer brands—authenticity, flavor, and history—to bring them into the fold.

New packaging design for the Coors Banquet Legacy Collection
The packaging design for the Coors Banquet Legacy Collection included three can designs, each of which harkened back to a different era of the brand’s past, one reading.

Craft beer has been a thorn in the side of big brand breweries for some time, with the category taking a 13.2% bite out of the market in 2022. Furthermore, the craft beer segment is attracting the younger generation—50% of millennials aged 25 to 34 versus 36% of U.S. consumers overall, according to a report in Marketing Science. So how can commercial brewers tap into this demographic?

While big beer brands may be inclined to adopt the whimsy and eccentricity of craft beer package design to attract younger consumers, it’s important to remember what attracts millennials to craft beer—authenticity, flavor, and history—and that’s something larger commercial brands offer in spades. Over the past year, a number of established beer brands have redesigned their packaging with graphics that tap into the heritage of their brews, emphasizing their long and storied histories. This strategy not only brings the authenticity sought by younger beer consumers, but it also provides familiarity to its existing base, oftentimes the Baby Boomers.

Coors Banquet collection draws on 150 years of history

With Coors Banquet beer dating back to 1873, “the history of Coors Banquet is the history of American beer.” That’s according to parent company, Molson Coors, which in April of last year launched a limited-edition line of packaging to pay homage to the brand and its inextricable link with American beer history.

Coors Brewing Company was established in 1873 in Golden, Colo., by immigrant Adolph Coors, who developed a recipe using 100% natural Rocky Mountain water. For years, Coors Banquet was a favorite among local gold and silver miners. When prohibition hit Colorado in 1916, the brewer was ordered to drain 516 barrels of beer, only starting production back up again after the repeal of the law in 1933. For years after, until 1991, the beer was available only in a handful of western states, leading fans of Coors Banquet—“The Coveted Lager”—to smuggle it across state lines. And, in 1959, the brand pioneered the use of the two-piece recyclable aluminum can, a development that revolutionized the beverage industry.

With these colorful stories to draw from, Coors Banquet created a number of Heritage Collections over the years. However, the 2022 line was reimagined. “In the past, this promo would be, ‘Let’s redo a can from 10 years ago and release it into the market,’” says Aaron Funke, senior creative director for Equator, the packaging and brand design agency that worked with the Coors Banquet on the limited-edition line. “But Coors wanted it to be something different, something that appealed to longtime fans of the brand and also a new consumer target.”

Equator began the design process for the collection a year before its launch, in spring 2021, collaborating closely with the company’s design team—in particular Candace Walters, U.S. Design & Graphics team manager, and Stephanie Clanfield, global marketing manager for Coors Banquet.


   Read related article, “Maltese Brewer Cisk Revamps Design with Traditional Elements Intact.”


According to Funke, the Coors Banquet team writes design briefs that are “second to none.” He  adds, “When we start a project with them, they give us a good background on the brand, where it’s going and why, as well as some thought starters on where we could go and positioning. So, they’re great on giving us a steer.”

For the 2022 Coors Banquet Legacy Collection, Funke shares that the brand was looking for something that appealed to millennials and would have Coors Banquet Legacy Collection case pack packaging designAn important element of the packaging design for the limited-edition Coors Banquet collection was the secondary packaging, which was used to create ‘visual theatre’ on-shelf.greater stopping power when put together in-store. “It wasn’t just about the cans but also the secondary packaging; creating visual theatre, so when it’s all stacked together, it creates a greater story,” he says. “It was as much about the impact as it was about the heritage.”

In developing the design strategy, Equator began with how to match the Coors Banquet legacy with the millennial consumer in terms of what the brand stands for and what millennials are seeking and tried to find a link between the two. “This led to creative pathways, which eventually led to can designs,” says Funke. “We came to the idea of the outdoors and, specifically, the concept of the golden hour.”

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