Epilogue: Death of a Lifestyle Beer
One of the scenes Saint Archer offered fans.
Beer was in a very different place eight years ago. The craft segment was in the fifth year of double-digit growth, and would grow an astonishing 18% by the end of the year—from under 8% of the total beer market to 11% in a single year. It was the start of the great era of acquisitions; in a two-year period, big breweries purchased fifteen major breweries, betting that they would help jump-start sales for companies losing market share each year. Craft beer seemed to be the future.
Amid the obvious purchases—Boulevard, Ballast Point, Lagunitas—a few seemed like odd bets. Golden Road, 10 Barrel (40k), and Saint Archer stood out because they were new and untested and relatively small (none larger than 40,000 barrels). They all had something in common that caught their purchasers’ eyes, though: they were positioned as great lifestyle brands. In the years since, much has changed, and big companies have abandoned craft beer as a vehicle for explosive growth. As if to emphasize the shift, Molson Coors announced they had sold Saint Archer’s brewing facility to Ballast Point and were retiring the Saint Archer as a brand. So what happened to lifestyle beer?
Lifestyle Branding
I wrote about Saint Archer eight years ago as the poster brewery for this approach. Founded by a collection of sixteen “ambassadors” in enviable professions (surf-, snow- and skateborders, filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians, etc.), it advanced an aspirational way of life through a website that looked like a travel magazine, along with videos of very cool people doing very cool things through a distressed lens in the California sunshine. I wrote at the time:
All of this reflects a strain of consumerism known as “lifestyle branding.” The notion is this: “When a consumer makes a purchase of certain brands, the behavior and choices define the expression of a certain taste—of a personal identity. It makes the statement, ‘This is who and what I am.’” It is what’s known as “aspirational marketing.” It asks customers to align themselves with products that express an image they’d like to associate with, like hardcore athletes, intrepid world travelers or mountain-climbing adventurers. Forbes explained how lifestyle branding helped elevate Nike, Apple, and Virgin by “convincing more people that adopting them would amplify their personal ethos or identity.” Successful brands tap into customers’ emotions and provides a kind of wish-fulfillment.
It sounds very much like the description Saint Archer CEO Josh Landon gave San Diego Magazine. “People love brands that they connect to. Like Michael Jordan’s brand. You connect with Quicksilver athletes, but you know they pay them.” Associating glamorous ambassadors with the brand gives it a similar aura.”[I]f I’m at Saint Archer and Taylor Knox pours me a beer and says, ‘Hey, thanks for drinking this. I own it’—well, just as a fan I’d say, ‘Holy shit, Taylor Knox owns a beer? I’ll never drink anything else.’”
Apparently, they did drink something else.
Limits of Lifestyle
Saint Archer couldn’t sell lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean the whole endeavor was doomed. To some extent, 10 Barrel has pulled it off. They’ve been committed to the “drink beer outside” ethos and it has translated into sales and success. Not, perhaps, the magnitude breweries hoped to see “lifestyle” brands produce back in 2014, but the 10 Barrel purchase was far from the failure Saint Archer was.
But look up the coast a ways and you do see one hugely successful lifestyle beer brand: Firestone Walker’s 805. Dating to roughly the same era, it has the same visual aesthetic, the same aspirational positioning, the same black-and-white photos and films of cool people doing cool things. Of course, Firestone Walker was nearly 20 years old by the time 805 really started rolling—not two like Saint Archer when MillerCoors bought it. Beer is a little different than other products, and tradition seems to matter more to its consumers. Perhaps that’s why 805 blasted off while Saint Archer fizzled.
The death of Saint Archer does seem like the end of an era. The approach of engineering a lifestyle brand came from a time and place very different from this one. Big beer companies saw this kind of branding as a vehicle for driving sales among a particular demographic who didn’t love triple IPAs but found Bud Light too bro-y or mainstream or daddish. In 2022 that demographic has many choices from upscale seltzers to canned cocktails. Companies have found those products are a more natural fit for that audience. For whatever reasons, beer isn’t a natural fit as a lifestyle brand. It’s too much an everyman (everyperson?) drink.
So we bid adieu not just to Saint Archer, but the over-exuberance of an era that thought a buying such a brewery was a good bet. I don’t expect to see Molson Coors buying another small, two-year-old brewery founded by a bunch of surfers anytime soon. They’re way too busy trying to look for the next liquid to turn “hard.” RIP.