Brand personality and touch points: where drinkers meet your brewery

Drinkers meet your brand in places you never designed

Ask a brewpub team where their brand lives and most will say the logo and the cans. Then a regular orders on Zomato, gets a reply on WhatsApp and picks up a coaster with an old logo on it. Each of those moments says something about you.

We call these touch points. List 20 of them before any design work starts. Twenty is enough to push past the obvious five and find the ones nobody owns. This step sits inside the brand strategy stage of our brewery rebrand guide.

List 20 touch points, including the ones outside your walls

Start inside the building, then walk out of it. A Bengaluru or Pune brewpub might write:

• Taproom: tap handles, tap list board, taster paddle, menu, coasters, glassware, staff T-shirts, bill folder.
• Packaging: 330 ml and 500 ml cans, 650 ml bottles, growlers, carry bags.
• Online: Instagram, Google Maps listing, website, WhatsApp Business profile, food delivery listings.
• Off-premise: shelf strips and fridge stickers at retail shops, event stalls, festival banners.

That is already more than 20. Mark the five a first-time drinker is most likely to meet. Note that point-of-sale material in shops sits close to alcohol advertising rules, so check what your state allows before you print it.

Nine sliders turn vague adjectives into decisions

Everyone wants their brewery to be friendly and authentic, which tells a designer nothing. Use sliders instead: pairs of opposites where you mark a point between the two. We put them on a 1 to 10 scale:

• Homemade to precise
• Economical to expensive
• Simple to complex
• Light to serious
• Friendly to corporate
• Heritage to ground-breaking
• Casual to formal
• Necessity to luxury
• Quiet to loud

A brewery that scores 3 on quiet to loud should not have a neon tap list and a DJ every Friday. The sliders make that kind of clash visible.

Score alone, then argue about the gaps

Run it as a team exercise. Give each of your four to six decision makers a sheet and ten minutes to score all nine sliders alone, with no discussion. Then put the scores side by side.

Agreement is nice. Disagreement is where the work is. If the head brewer marks 2 on homemade to precise and the owner marks 9, you have two different breweries in one building. In our view any slider with a spread of more than 4 points deserves its own conversation before a designer hears about it.

A shared mood board shows what words cannot

Next, collect pictures. Each person adds 10 to 15 images of logos, packaging, textures, colours and type that feel right, from any industry. A shared Google Drive folder or a Pinterest board works. So does a big sheet of card on the taproom wall.

Sort the images under five headings: logo, packaging, tap handle, merchandise and taproom. Patterns appear quickly. If half the board is hand-drawn and half is clean Swiss type, that matches the split you found on the sliders. A good designer will read this board before drawing a single line.

Ten words should hold the whole brand

Finish with a brand essence: the single idea that ties together what you sell, who it is for, how you sound and what you stand for. Write it in under ten words. A made-up example: "Careful beer for people who like to linger." It is plain, yet it rules out a lot.

Now test it against your 20 touch points. Does the bill folder feel careful? Does the Instagram grid invite people to linger? Every no is a job for the rebrand. Turning an essence like that into a label, a can and a taproom that sells is the part most teams find hardest. People inside a brewery are often too close to it, so an outside eye with years of advertising behind it can see the gaps faster.

Your first step: print the touch point list this week and ask each person to circle the three that feel least like you.

About the authors

Ankur Napa is a Master Brewer who also works in data and AI. Chatty Girija spent more than 30 years in advertising, hosts the Cheers Chatty Beer Podcast and teaches at Craft Beer School.

Common questions

What is a brand touch point for a brewery?

Any place a drinker meets your brewery, such as a tap handle, a can, a menu, a WhatsApp reply or a shelf sticker in a shop.

How many touch points should a brewery list?

About 20. Most brewpubs find more once they include online and off-premise ones.

What is a brand essence?

A short line, ideally under ten words, that sums up what the brewery offers, who it is for and how it behaves.

Who should do the personality exercise?

The four to six people who sign off brand decisions. Each scores alone first so the gaps between them show up.