Here’s a deeper dive into how and why

Great Divide Brewing Company possesses one of the most easily recognized brand catalogs in Colorado craft beer. From the block lettered logo with the backbone of the Rockies running through it, to the cutout product icons (including the instantly recognizable sasquatch captioned with the catchphrase: I BELIEVE), you know the look and you crave the beer. Yet(i) despite that recognition, Great Divide is announcing a new marketing approach that more fully unifies its offerings.

Thirst Colorado writer Kyle Kirves spoke with Matt Sandy, Marketing Manager at Great Divide Brewing Co. in Denver about the new packaging and what it means for the brand going forward.

THIRST COLORADO: The Great Divide Brewing imagery is so iconic and easily recognizable, but you’re opting to make some changes to unify the branding. Why? And why now?

MATT SANDY: We hadn’t done a significant refresh in over 10 years when we moved most of our beers to cans. We tweaked some of the designs because there was a different canvas to work with, but it was still very closely linked to the original designs. This time, we kind of stepped back and looked at the art as it was and kind of picked the pieces we liked because we knew the icons resonated. We wanted everything to have the same outward appearance and be uniform on the shelf. We looked for elements that could help tie them together so that if you saw all our packages in a row in a cooler on a grocery shelf you could easily identify them all as Great Divide.

TC: Great Divide’s branding uses a lot of silhouettes in the product imagery. Yeti, Collette, Titan, Hoss and more. Are those icons remaining? Will we still see those familiar characters in the new logos?

MS: Yes, especially with those iconic beers that have been around for almost as long as Great Divide has been. You will see a lot of the same icons on the new packaging, but we've just changed some background imagery, tweaked some colors and added new ones. They will still be recognizable, just in a cleaner, refreshed style.

TC: What about what’s in the can? Does the branding change suggest that established recipes and formulas will be changing? Any “New Coke” out there?

MS: (laughs). No. Nothing like a New Coke. All of your favorite Great Divide beers are gonna taste like the same great beers people have been drinking since 1994. Consistently high-quality product is something we really pride ourselves in. If we do ever change the recipe, we want to be transparent about that. If we are ever making tweaks to beers (like a recent reimagining of Titan) it's just to make sure that that beer is the best version that we can make

TC: What are people inside Great Divide saying about the changes? And your customers?

MS: Internally, everyone is very excited by the new art. Some of these designs have been floating around for some time so we've had the opportunity to show them to a lot of stakeholders within the company and everyone's been extremely excited about it. I work in a building where we package these beers and it's been very exciting as each new brand has rolled off the canning line -- everyone kind of gathering around, checking it out, picking up the six packs and looking at all sides. The buzz has been great. Externally, the feedback has been very positive even at this early stage of rollout.

TC: Which agency and artists did you work with? What was that process like?

MS: We work with an outside agency called Grit (Grit Advertising, 2366 15th Street, Denver). They’re local and we've been working with them since around 2015. They were able to take our vision and turn it into something tangible. What you're seeing out in the market is kind of what internally we landed on. They’re great and they give us some great options to choose from.

TC: Will Great Divide be doing a merch refresh to reflect the new iconography?

MS: Everything we've been bringing in has a new Great Divide primary logo on it that we rolled out at the beginning of the year. In our tap rooms, our best sellers are either Great Divide log t-shirts or anything with a Yeti on it. We'll have some Yeti t-shirts coming in probably in the next couple and weeks and, yeah, we will slowly roll out some new brand specific stuff.

TC: There’s been a special push to a new message around “We Still Believe” as opposed to the established “I Believe” that your fans are familiar with. What does that mean to GDBC and you?

MS: When people saw that we were selling our RiNo location, some immediately drew the conclusion that Great Divide was closing. That’s not the case. We wanted to get the message across that while there's some change, like that we've moved all our production from RiNo to our original Arapahoe location, we're not going anywhere, we're still brewing great beer. We've got great people working here, and we've got state-of-the-art equipment that's helping us be more efficient and flexible. We’re not for sale and we’re as fiercely independent as we were in 1994. In fact, Great Divide is growing, and we just want to get that message out there that not all change is bad. We’re going to be around for a long time, and we want people along for that ride.