New Glory Craft Brewery:
Tapping the Perfect Partner with Legion Films
New Glory, a Sacramento microbrewery with big marketing ideas found a partner they could trust to deliver their unique vision in Legion Films.
Milling & Mashing a Social Video Campaign to Life
New Glory is a Sacramento-based craft brewery well known for its clean and creative beers, as well as introducing a new style every week. Founded by Julian Lux and his family in 2013, they’ve successfully built a culture that loves to experiment, play, and push against the hazy boundaries of a saturated and competitive market.
“It’s a lot,” says Stephanie Lewis, Marketing Director of New Glory, when describing the work required in the storytelling and marketing of each unique flavor every week. “And our core brands often get pushed aside.”
The Challenge
With summer’s promise of longer days and warmer weather rapidly approaching, New Glory needed to act quickly to showcase and reposition their underrated core four brands as the ‘go-to backyard beer of the summer.’
“We want people to see it in grocery stores while shopping for their upcoming barbeque or just hanging out at the pool,” Julian shares.
With limited experience in film production, New Glory quickly realized they needed help to bring their vision to life.
Recognizing the rising impact of video content in the craft brewery space, and having worked with Legion Films on previous media projects, New Glory presented their goal of producing several pieces of content to fill their summer marketing schedule.
Asking questions that boil down a vision or goal to a rich and marketable solution is key. The onus is typically on the agency, in this case, Legion, to come in with the questions and the creative during this initial meeting, however, Erika Lux, co-founder, and the company’s graphic designer had a trove of ideas ready to pitch from day one. Creativity was not going to be the challenge.
“Stephanie and Erika came to us with a mountain of ideas for content. Brilliant ideas. But, some were going to be out of scope for the budget. And that’s fine because our job is to figure out where the essence of those great ideas can intersect with the budget and timelines. Clients that are open, quickly understand the demands of certain creative paths. Tons of different shots, multiple locations, actors—it’s just a wide breadth of complexity,” says Roth Rind, Director of Photography on the shoot.
As tends to happen with inspired, growing companies, they’re foaming over the rim with ideas and willing to push creative and budgetary limits.
“The ideas were so good,” says Roth. “They made it exciting and easy for us to spin off of and hone in on their core message of being the go-to backyard beer of the summer.”
That potential energy is far from lost on fluid creative partners like Legion Films who can run and ride alongside that soaring spirit with ease. They take pride in creating a pragmatic approach to turning those sparks of a good idea into viral lightning.
“Camera gear, lights, tripods, reflectors, all that needs to be adjusted and calibrated prior to shooting. All of it adds up to a lot of time spent,” says Legion. “And while the preliminary ideas were excellent, it could take a whole day to get enough footage for just one of the pieces the client wanted. Time spent = money, and they could have easily blown the whole budget on one piece of content they wanted.”
“Every problem has a solution,” says Legion, “and we were committed to working with the client to develop a plan that would deliver on their needs.”
The Fix
Within a few meetings, the creative collabs at New Glory and Legion had hit their stride and concluded that rather than telling their story with multiple shots per scene and large set pieces that required hair and makeup and wardrobe, narrowing the scope would be most effective.
“How can we get the core messaging across, but simplify these shots? How can we work smarter and more efficiently for our clients? That’s what we’re all about as a company,” says Steve from Legion.
Just like yeast, a little goes a long way. Zooming in and focusing on the individual elements that comprise the relaxing and overarching narrative of a summer day in the backyard, Legion Films made it possible to shoot everything required in one day, in one location, and work well within the budget.
Incorporating the elements of a typical backyard set which includes the pool, the barbecue, and even a game of cornhole, the plan was to create ten pieces of Micro Content for their social media platforms between 10-30 seconds long. Combined with ten pieces of slightly longer Medium Content, as well as two short pieces that highlight all four beers at the same time, the production needed to be planned perfectly to finish shooting in one day.
“Medium and Micro Content is a great way to stay within a budget,” says Tyler from Legion, “while still delivering a clear message to the customer. Another advantage is that they usually only require one shot per piece of content, and sometimes you can even use the same camera angle and rig for multiple pieces of content. Narrowing the perspective of the shots also meant we could use the same overall location (a backyard) and get multiple looks and feels.”
Production fired on all cylinders throughout the day, and a wooden half-table was even built by Legion Films to fit the frame perfect for the pieces that highlighted all four beers. Snacks and a barbecued lunch accompanied a friendly cornhole competition which firmly set the summer tone of the shoot and led to an overall exceptional experience.
“They were super creative in terms of telling compelling stories without too much action,” says Stephanie from New Glory, “and we couldn’t be happier!”
The Results
12-hours, 22 pieces of content, and the celebratory ring of IPA bottles cheering later, Legion films not only met New Glory’s goal of providing enough material to fill their demanding summer marketing schedule, but they also cataloged and archived footage for possible future content that can be re-cut if needed.
“Our goal is always becoming long-term partners with our clients, and that means providing value beyond the scope of any current project,” says Steve from Legion Films. “We like to think ahead, months ahead of time, and ask ourselves, ‘What might they need from us then?’”
Leadership at New Glory lauds that the deliverables exceeded all expectations, and that the working relationship between New Glory and Legion Films promises to extend far into the future.
“We’ve worked with them for a long time now, and I love how they conduct themselves,” says Stephanie . “They’ve always been incredibly creative and generous, even though I know they have bigger fish to fry. They still manage to make us feel valued and important, and we look forward to working with them later in the year for the holidays and colder weather campaigns.”
New Glory has seen a significant increase in social activity since this campaign went live.
Working with New Glory firmly established and confirmed Legion Films’ raw creative talent in the competitive space, raising the bar for what a high-quality and engaging social marketing campaign looks like for all craft breweries in the Greater Sacramento area.
You’d be surprised how hard it is to get a beer to foam over at just the right time, and not cover up the logo!
