In short
Sarah Warman (ex-BrewDog) discusses her shift from 12+ years as BrewDog’s first full-time marketing hire to fractional CMO/advisor work, and how to create campaigns that go viral. She covers PR/marketing learnings: aligning teams early, maximizing organic/social/paid/PR together, building community before crowdfunding, and the importance of message delivery.
Guest background
Sarah is now a fractional CMO and freelance brand strategist. She previously worked at BrewDog from 2013, eventually leading Equity for Punks crowdfunding and working directly with co-founder James Watt for ~7 years. She also became a certified Cicerone beer expert (funded by BrewDog).
Key claims
Fractional is “part time” but temporary and flexible. Crowdfunding requires a pre-built community and correct sequencing. Viral outcomes often come from being ready to amplify what unexpectedly takes off.
Notable examples
Vote Punk (selfie outside polling station for a free Punk IPA pint), Mash Tag (community-designed beer), paternity leave (dog-related staff benefit), Doghouse Hotel (Indiegogo), and PR fail Pink IPA (gender pay gap messaging landed poorly).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOSarah Warman's Current Role
1:20 to 1:49
Sarah explains her work as a fractional CMO and freelance brand strategist.
“Today I'm joined by the wonderful Sarah Warman.”
Transition to Fractional Work
1:49 to 4:47
Discussion on Sarah's shift from full-time to fractional work and its challenges.
“So I personally see fractional as just a fancy new way of saying part time.”
The Need for Fractional CMOs
4:47 to 6:03
Sarah talks about the growing demand for fractional roles in marketing.
“My sister-in-law has recently gone fractional herself and it's a big switch from 10 plus years doing one role.”
Introduction to Social Tip
6:03 to 8:01
Exploration of Social Tip, its model, and Sarah's involvement with it.
“So how has that transition been for you?”
The Power of Organic Promotion
8:38 to 11:56
Discussion on the effectiveness of authentic brand promotion through social media.
Sarah's Career Journey
11:56 to 14:00
Sarah shares her background in marketing, starting from school to working at BrewDog.
“And, you know, I was an account exec when I first started there.”
Starting at BrewDog with No Budget
14:00 to 15:00
Learn how Sarah Warman began her marketing career at BrewDog with no budget.
“When I started at BrewDog as the only marketing employee, I was not told this is how much money we're going to spend and this is where we're going to spend it.”
Equity for Punks: Crowdfunding Success
15:00 to 17:20
Discover how Sarah managed BrewDog's crowdfunding initiative and its impact.
“Within a year of starting at Brewdog, I was put in charge of Equity for Punks, which was Brewdog's crowdfunding program.”
Building Community for Effective Crowdfunding
17:20 to 19:00
Understand the importance of community in executing successful crowdfunding campaigns.
“And that's what BrewDog had in Swathes at the time.”
Evolution of Marketing at BrewDog
19:00 to 21:00
Explore how BrewDog's marketing evolved from a small team to a structured approach.
“I would go to, you know, screen printer to watch them make some t-shirts for us on a very short run because that's all we could afford.”
Show all 24 chapters
Memorable Marketing Campaigns at BrewDog
21:00 to 22:20
Hear about Sarah's favorite marketing campaigns and their impact on the brand.
“There's a lot more pressure in terms of the turnover of these things.”
Vote Punk: Engaging the Public
22:20 to 25:00
Learn about the 'Vote Punk' campaign and its success in encouraging voter participation.
“We were toasting your democratic right to vote.”
Dog House Hotel: A Unique Idea
25:00 to 27:00
Discover the concept behind the Dog House Hotel and its crowdfunding success.
Lessons from Marketing Wins and Fails
27:00 to 28:00
Reflect on the successes and failures of BrewDog's marketing campaigns and key takeaways.
“So I think the biggest sort of negative project that I was personally involved in was Pink IPA.”
The Pink IPA Campaign: A PR Case Study
28:00 to 29:50
Explore the lessons learned from a controversial campaign and its impact.
“Unfortunately, the way that we landed the message was poor.”
Effective PR Strategies for Maximum Impact
29:50 to 31:35
Learn how to effectively share ideas and maximize PR opportunities.
“So although it's not the outcome of the campaign and what it was supposed to do, it still goes, well, why did that fail?”
Collaborative Opportunities in Marketing
31:35 to 33:55
Understand the importance of collaboration in marketing and PR.
“that is opportunistic, then you just need to make sure that everyone's on the bus.”
Personal Growth and Brand Connection at BrewDog
33:55 to 35:56
Discover the personal and professional growth experienced while working at BrewDog.
The Journey from Beer to TV: Achieving Childhood Dreams
35:56 to 38:19
Hear how a career in beer led to unexpected opportunities in media.
“So I'd love to know anything from your time there and anything you can share around your experience working with BrewDog.”
Navigating Relationships with Founders
38:19 to 42:00
Learn how to work effectively with founders and navigate professional relationships.
“my dream of not presenting Blue Peter but presenting the beer section on Sunday brunch as a result of the beer knowledge that I came to gain through working at Brewdog.”
Learning from BrewDog Leaders
42:00 to 44:32
Discover how influential leaders at BrewDog shaped Sarah's career and approach.
“And I did come back and she did give me that role, which was I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to own a business division.”
Music That Represents Work Life
44:32 to 45:54
Sarah shares songs that reflect her work experiences and the startup journey.
“Like there's a lot of these songs that came to mind.”
Advice for Aspiring Marketers
45:54 to 46:53
Sarah offers valuable insights for those entering the marketing and FMCG sectors.
“And to anyone who wants to get into the marketing, PR, FMCG world, what would some best advice or best practice tips be from yourself?”
Connecting with Sarah Warman
46:53 to 48:16
Learn how to connect with Sarah on LinkedIn and explore her BrewDog preferences.
“I'm always wandering the supermarket aisle, seeing what's out there, checking the different areas.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to the Unfounders. Today I am joined by the wonderful Sarah Warman who was at BrewDog for over 12 years and is now an incredible fractional CMO doing all sorts with brilliant brands. Now I really loved digging into Sarah's background, how she fell into the marketing and PR world, all her journey, her experience, her progression within BrewDog, her experience of working with James directly, with PR campaigns, how you can make things go viral, the learnings, the ones that went right, the ones that didn't go right. there was so much in this and I just think Sarah has got such a great creative mind she was really open really honest and I love this conversation so without further ado let's get on with it are you a founder of the next exciting food and drink round are you looking to scale
0:43Sarah Warman:and grow well let me introduce you to mission kitchen london's home food and drink entrepreneurs and sponsor of the unfounders mission kitchen gives you the equipment support and community to take your business to the next level with flexible access to commercial kitchens expert mentorship on site and a network of hundreds of like-minded founders, this could be exactly what your business needs to level up. If you want to find out more, why not book a tour today at missionkitchen.org forward slash unfounders.
1:19Hello and welcome back to the Unfounders. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Sarah Warman. So Sarah, can you please let everyone know what you do for work?
1:27Sarah Warman:Absolutely. I'm Sarah and I currently work as a fractional CMO and advisor to small exciting businesses. And I'm also a freelance brand strategist for a range of brands. Love it. So we've had a few fractional people on now, so the term shouldn't be unfamiliar to people. But for those who are new to it, can you explain what that means? And how do you do your fractional working and what sort of brands are you working? Yeah, sure. So I personally see fractional as just a fancy new way of saying part time. in fairness I think that's fair but it's also temporary I work for example I'll work a couple of days a week on a brand called Mary which is a sports bra brand and then I might have a day a week working on a new men's fertility brand I might have a day a week working on a new snack brand and then the other day of the week I might work on a brand like Social Tip which is a new brand a new tech company where you can get rewarded for when you post about brands that you love online so it's a real mixed bag and actually it takes me a little bit back to my agency days but it's less sort of code switching and actually you've got a little bit more consistency and a little bit more control as a fractional so yes it's all over the place and I'm perfectly honest but I'm really enjoying kind of being able to dabble in lots of different industries and kind of utilize the experience that I have and apply that to brands in lots and lots of different sectors.
2:44Yeah I'd love to know how you are how the switch has been from being full-time in one composition to actually having that fractional move because you were a brew dog for 12 plus years which we'll dig into but from that kind of more regular and you know what you're doing it's one brand to now doing multiple things like how have you found that switch and what were the reasons you made the change was it family was it life like what brought you to going you know what
3:06Sarah Warman:actually I think this could be the way I want to work now yeah it takes getting used to and if I'm perfectly honest I don't think I'm used to it yet so I only made this change in June and I don't think it was really something that I necessarily knew what to expect. I sort of fell into it a little bit. Just there were a couple of things that came up that were part time. I was applying to full time roles as well, but I wasn't really sure what I wanted. But I've got to the stage in my career where actually it was easier to get fractional roles because there seems to actually be quite a lot of businesses at the minute that want to bring in that senior strategy, but they maybe don't want a full time or they maybe don't have the budget for that headcount, for example so there are more opportunities for someone like me at that level at the minute so I was just kind of thinking you know what have I got to lose by utilizing my strengths as well as being able to flex my the time flexibility that I have as well to my advantage so I've just kind of fallen into it a little bit and I've given myself a year to see how I get on with it if in 12 months it feels like it's just too much to keep on top of then maybe I'll go back to full-time work but at the moment I'm I am really enjoying it and I really wanted post brew dog life I really wanted to try and flex my creative muscle around lots of different brands and sectors as well because I read about all of these different incredible businesses but I've been in craft beer for 12 years so it was a very kind of consistent kind of category that I was focusing on so I am really enjoying that opportunity to just try lots of different things it's a stretch for me as well which is super important for me.
4:43Sarah Warman:Ask me in 12 months is probably the best answer to that question in terms of how I'm feeling about it. But at the moment, I like it. I love that. I think it's really good to see. My sister-in-law has recently gone fractional herself and it's a big switch from 10 plus years doing one role. So yeah, I think there's more and more people doing it. And as you said, I think the benefits to businesses are you get someone with bags of experience and you can go, look, I just need a couple of hours a week or a couple of hours a month or whatever it is. So it's a really, really clever way that whoever created the term fractional makes so much sense so yeah exactly I absolutely agree I also think a lot of brands they are started by incredible people who know exactly what their product is and why they exist but they maybe don't have marketing experience and I think a lot of brands do really really well to just try and do their own marketing for a bit but they will get to this point where they plateau and they're not sure where to go next and that's where someone like myself or another fractional can come in with that expertise of like just addressing you know this is where you've got to this is how you got here fantastic world has moved on this is where your audience exists now this is how you reach them and actually taking a slightly different approach to things so that's where I'm finding a lot of my initial sort of clients are coming from in terms of they have great you know projects they have great services they've got great products but they just don't really know how to take it to the next level so that's where someone like like me comes in that's brilliant and you mentioned social tip now before hit record um nids who is one of our junior brand managers at pact she's just literally got us live on the social tip platform now it's something that i've seen it was being talked about and launched and now it's obviously live and up and running so for those who are completely new to it what's it like working with that because you said it's like it's now a tech company you're not working in craft fierce per se.
6:28So how has that transition been for you? And what is it about Social Tip that excites you?
6:33Sarah Warman:Yeah, absolutely. So Social Tip is started by James Watt, who was one of the co-founders of BrewDog. So that's how I knew him. I worked directly for James for about seven years. So I had a really good working relationship with him. And he left probably a year, 18 months ago now, I can't remember, to start Social Tip. And that's his new venture whereby he is actively supporting brands to reward their customers for posting about the brands that they love online. So every day, everyone's always posting about the brands that they buy and telling their friends about them online. And it's a form of really authentic advocacy.
7:07Sarah Warman:So the system that they've built around Social Tip actually checks the value of that content that's been created, applies a value to it and rewards those consumers for posting about those brands online. So the brands have complete control over you know how much they want to reward people how frequently they want to reward people so it's really dynamic depending on the kind of the sector you're in the frequency of purchase that you might have for your products and it's really effective in terms of actually just creating you know generating amazing content for your brand that UGC content that everyone is after at the moment and actually rewarding your customers for it so giving them back something you know that they otherwise wouldn't be able to get access to so it's a really smart way to do marketing in the modern landscape of social media where actually a lot of people are paying for influencers and they cost a huge amount of money but most of us can now tell when something is an ad a mile off so actually getting a post from someone that you know is much more effective and impactful we all know that brand is important right but what if i told you it can impact growth and customer acquisition costs by up to 50 against ordinary are a brand agency who help founders marketing departments scaling teams ensure their brand is the most powerful tool for growth from brand strategy, tone of voice and visual identity to helping you get retail ready with ongoing brand growth retainers.
8:23They really are the full circle agency for growing your brand. Being the team are absolutely fantastic. Just imagine what they could do for your brand. So what are you waiting for? See how they can be your grand growth partners at againstordinary.com. Yeah, no, it's funny. Like I kind of started falling into this world within LinkedIn, which is not a paid for thing, but it's more of a, I see brands that I love and I post about them and then other brands will message me hey can I send you some stuff to post about I'm like yeah you can but it's not a service I'm not providing a service there it's more like if I find something and I love it then I will talk about it and I think your core fans and the people who are already posting about it being able to reward them and just be like look you're already shouting about us thank you here's money to buy your next load of products or whatever it is it's just a really nice thing
9:11Sarah Warman:exactly because the individual who is posting about your brand has to have a receipt to prove that they already bought it so that you've already made the sale to that individual you're now just rewarding someone for posting about it online so anything that you get off the back of that is an upside essentially at the end of the day so it's a really interesting approach not to approach people give them free products and get them to post about it and pay for them to do that but actually paying someone for having already purchased your product and posting about it to their friends who will genuinely think oh that is an actual recommendation rather than just a you know an influencer post.
9:43I love that and now I want to spend most time chatting with you digging through your career and your journey up to where you are today so I'd love to kind of take things right the way back to when you're in school and in college or university and was marketing always the goal like what did you go when I'm older I want to do this for a living?
10:01Sarah Warman:Okay so the the ambition I had as a child was to be a TV presenter I really wanted to be on Blue Peter that was like the gold star for me and we will come back to that in a moment but I actually didn't really know what I wanted to do when I left school and I went and did a foundation art and design qualification and during that I made a lot of friends had a lot of fun but didn't really feel like I was really making much headway in terms of my career applied to do graphic design at university and one of my tutors took me aside and said you're much better at talking about art than you are making it.
10:32Sarah Warman:So I think you should look at the universities that you've applied to and see if anyone any of them do marketing, that would be much more better for your skill set. And it was like a light bulb moment where I realised that actually that was the path that I should be taking. So only one of the universities that I'd applied to for graphic design actually also did marketing, which was Southampton Solent. So I switched courses and went and did marketing with advertising management at Southampton Solent, really enjoyed it. And I gained a lot from it. I I had a lot of arguments with my tutors because I was actually super passionate about, you know, the things they were talking about and the reasons for it.
11:06Sarah Warman:And after university, I decided I wanted a little bit more exposure into the different types of marketing that you can actually go into. So I did work experience in television advertising, direct mail and PR. And I absolutely fell in love with PR. I really loved the element of storytelling and actually getting people excited and talking about a brand rather than just pushing information out to them. I really valued that. So I decided to pursue a career in PR. I took a slight segue to do fashion events, which was my kind of my foot in the door in terms of doing marketing as a job. And then I got a job at Manifest, which is a PR agency in London.
11:44Sarah Warman:Actually, they're international. They've got offices everywhere. But at the time, it was super tiny. I was one of the first employees there and had a great time working with Alex Myers and Cam Brown on, you know, getting new pitch work done and just doing account management. And, you know, I was an account exec when I first started there. And then after that, I moved to BrewDog. So I decided I was done with agency life and handed in my notice and I was going to go and work as an office manager at a, I think they were like a development firm or something. I'm not 100 % sure what they even did, to be perfectly honest with you.
12:14Sarah Warman:I just need I just wanted a job and I wanted the security of a job to go to so I handed in my notice and had my I was working my three months notice um waiting to go to this this other firm that was around the corner James Watt who um is the co-founder of Brewdog he um was one of my clients at Manifest and um he asked me if I would want to come and work at Brewdog instead of you know going to this other firm and he texted me that like he was literally in America he just texted me saying do you want to come and work at BrewDog and I said what's the job and he was like oh marketing and I was like okay sure and had to tell this other guy that I wasn't going to come and work in his business anymore he'd waited three months for me and he told me not to burn my bridges but I felt like this was one I was happy to burn unfortunately and I went and worked for BrewDog so that's when I then became the first marketing employee full-time at BrewDog.
13:05And what year was this?
13:06Sarah Warman:That was 2013 that I joined BrewDog. So obviously marketing is a huge part of BrewDog success and everything they've done so um you can see kind of through your time at brewdog in the 12 years you were there you've had various roles so from early days of marketing like back in 2013 what was the the beer landscape like and the business size because brewdog have kind of been this craft like punk outlandish trying to take on the beer industry and it felt like that was the time this was really like a how do we stamp our foot in the ground and do that yeah absolutely so that was exactly what Manifest's brief was at the time as well in terms of the PR exposure they were getting for Brewdog was to make noise and just you know become a bit of a noisy upstart in the industry so Manifest was responsible for a lot of those early kind of stunts and activities and that Brewdog was doing and I was I was involved when I was there as well so a lot of what I was doing when I first started at Brewdog was just finding ways to make a noise around the brand on no money.
14:06Sarah Warman:There was no budget. When I started at BrewDog as the only marketing employee, I was not told this is how much money we're going to spend and this is where we're going to spend it. I was told do the marketing. If you come up with something really clever, we'll see if there's some money for it. But that was about it. There wasn't anything more robust than that. I don't think it was until a couple of years later that we actually sort of created a marketing budget per se. And for someone starting out, that was great in terms of the creative license that it gave me and always meant that I was trying to come up with new ideas.
14:35Sarah Warman:29 % of what I came up with was either rubbish or not viable. So I think it definitely proved that James was open to anything by the fact that I kept coming up with these ideas and he said no to most of them. But for a lot of them, he would say, yes, just give it a try, see what happens. And a lot of them still fall flat, but it's, you know, you've got to throw enough out there just to see what actually works and what resonates with people. Within a year of starting at Brewdog, I was put in charge of Equity for Punks, which was Brewdog's crowdfunding program. So over the next 10 years, I was responsible for all of the rounds that we did under that.
15:13Sarah Warman:So we gained 200 ,000 retail investors from who raised about 100 million pounds through crowdfunding investments. That was an incredible project to be a part of in terms of continually breaking world records in terms of the amount of people who were investing in Brewdog, which was incredible and I really valued that experience you know there aren't actually many people in the world who have that much experience in crowdfunding for um for a brewery and so I do get asked a lot of questions about that and but I really enjoyed it and I think one of the sides of that that I really enjoyed was the fact that I was marketing a financial product that actually was extremely dull and there was a lot of very boring legalese around it as well that I had to worked closely with some actually quite excellent lawyers at RW Bleears.
16:00Sarah Warman:I really enjoyed working with them, but I didn't understand 90 % of what they were talking about. But actually sort of coming up with, you know, the benefits of investing, the use of proceeds and kind of looking at the integrated view of why people should invest in BrewDog and creating an entire campaign around that and looking at all the tactics and what was actually a funnel. But I was never taught the funnel when I studied marketing and I don't think the funnel was quite as as much of a thing when I was doing this you know 10 12 years ago it's all ever anyone talks about now is the funnel and I'm like the funnel let's see what you mean but um you know finding you know creating all of those awareness pieces and then actually finding ways to convert um to get people to become um investors in the business um in completely legal ways I should also say was you know a big a big part of my a big part of my role um from 2014 onwards as well i've seen it talked about quite a few times this was kind of the early days of crowdcube and these platforms that weren't really happening so this was kind of happening at the same time as these then followed so it's kind of like brew dogs are already doing this whole crowdfund world yes that's like a very complicated thing to be a part of which is a lot easier nowadays almost too easy in some cases as you've seen with certain brands raising when they're already on the way out and all of that yeah there's definitely a lot of legal implications around these kind of things but i think the beauty of it is kind of almost where the social tip play comes in as well is you're leveraging your audience and your your customers to help grow the business so i think it's yeah it's smart 100 one of the so whenever i talk to people about crowdfunding the first thing i always say is you need to build your community first there's no point crowdfunding to an empty room you need to make sure that you've got that community and that they want to be a part of your journey that's what will create and effective crowdfunding campaign.
17:46Sarah Warman:And that's what BrewDog had in Swathes at the time. And we did use Crowdcube as well. So we have a great relationship with Crowdcube. And, you know, they've evolved their products a huge amount over the past 10 years as well, because the landscape of crowdfunding has changed. So has, you know, the laws around it, the sort of the landscape that we are in, in terms of crowdfunding is completely different now. But there's still a massive opportunity to invest in, you know, great, fast-growing young businesses in the UK and beyond as well. So yeah, I still think crowdfunding is a brilliant way to engage your community and get them to be a part of your journey long-term.
18:22Sarah Warman:But it does mean that you need to make sure you do it in the right way. Don't just launch with a crowdfunder because you'll be very disappointed with the results of that. So it's making sure that you've got the traction and doing things in the right order. It's just the key thing that I always give people as a watch out. Yeah, I think I saw a brand, I can't remember who it was, but they they said along that those lines where they tried a crowdfund they were like turns out you actually need a crowd to do a crowdfund so um yeah so anyone else who's thinking it like build that first and and then make sure in the name the best but i'd love to go back to the kind of the marketing days at brew dog early stage so back in 2013 14 15 you're you're kind of that still smaller-ish business it's growing it's starting i think that's probably when i heard of it and you start to see punk in pubs and the craft beer places around and all of that and then obviously how marketing's then evolved to say last year for example like how has the team evolved how have the marketing plans and budgets like i imagine early days it was much more like right what's an idea how can we throw it out there whereas now i imagine there was a lot more processes as a business evolves you need to get more people to approve it yeah 100 the business at the point when I left it earlier this year about June time was not recognizable from the business that I joined in 2013.
19:39Sarah Warman:It was me on my own. I would go to, you know, screen printer to watch them make some t-shirts for us on a very short run because that's all we could afford. I ran the social media. Twitter was my primary concern at the time. You know, it was extremely different in terms of the landscape of marketing, the tools that you would prioritize, all of that. We didn't do any paid in terms of meta ads. I don't think even meta was a thing at the time. So none of that existed. It's now completely different in terms of what any brand would be looking at in terms of their marketing mix. At the point when I left BrewDog, there was a lot more structure around things.
20:14Sarah Warman:It was a lot more considered in terms of what the long term goals were. What are we planning to do for the next year, 18 months? Where do we want to get to? what are the commercial priorities and how do we actually achieve them with the budget that we've got which is now you know relatively substantial it's not insane but it's a lot more than you know what I had which was nothing so it is very very different now you know Brewdog does advertising you know they do out of home and they do a lot more engagement pieces with the community but they're much much much much broader reaching than they were you know back when I was kind of running things and trying to engage the craft beer community which like you say was still very very new at the time and you know back in 2013 I was just trying to engage people as a human being running a social account for the brand and it was it you know you can still do that now but you have to do it in a very different way you know I wasn't creating video content a social media manager now really needs to be a content creator and it's a much more difficult job compared to what I was where I could just write a funny tweet and get 100 retweets.
21:22Sarah Warman:And that was quite a good day. It's very different to that now. So the algorithms have changed. There's a lot more pressure in terms of the turnover of these things. But I think BrewDog is still creating some great marketing. It's just it's all relative to what the aims of the business are versus where it sort of came from. Yeah, I'd love to know some of your favorite campaigns that you were involved in or PR stance. Because to me, when I think of BrewDog, I think some of the early PR stunts and the big outlandish things that got everyone talking. I'd love to know your involvement in some of these or some of your favourites.
21:55And flip side, the times when things didn't quite go to plan or when things went wrong and how you dealt with those.
22:02Sarah Warman:Yeah. So I think my favourite campaign that we did at BrewDog and we did this multiple times was called Vote Punk, whereby it was the general election. There was quite a lot of unrest in the UK at the time. And we launched Vote Punk, whereby if you took a selfie outside the polling station to prove that you have voted and took that to a brew dog bar, you could get a free pint of Punk IPA. We were toasting your democratic right to vote. We were not, we were completely party agnostic. We were not siding with any individual political party, but we were also trying to encourage people to actually go out and vote because voter apathy was continuing to become more and more of a problem, which is common in many countries now.
22:41Sarah Warman:But, you know, that was our attempt to actually address something real in a way that actually was in keeping with the brand, whilst also doing a mass sampling campaign by encouraging people to come in and try the beer. so we did that quite a few times actually and every time it was a success and it had the benefit as well of the fact that during an election there's a bit of a media blackout so they can't really talk about anything political while there is a vote ongoing which means there is a bit of bandwidth for media coverage so we did get substantial press coverage during the elections when we did run Vote Punk because there was an opportunity to capture news desks when they were trying not to write about political themes whilst also writing about the election.
23:25Sarah Warman:So it just ticked a lot of boxes. I really liked it. We branded it in a really kind of strong way that was really in keeping with the brand. And so it looked great. And a lot of people enjoyed Pint of Punk talking about the vote at the end of the day. So Vote Punk was one of my favourites. Mash Tag is something that I did very early on and BrewDog still does now occasionally. And that's where we handed the keys to the brewery over to our community. And we ran this on Twitter before polls even existed. So it was extremely manual and took up a lot of my time. But essentially, over the course of a week, we invited people to choose the hops, the malt, the special twist and the name of a new beer that was completely designed democratically by social media.
24:08Sarah Warman:And the product was called Mash Tag. and they were given the ability to choose whatever they wanted and whatever they chose went into the beer. And then we made the beer and sold it. And it was just such a fun way to create a really community-driven piece of content and a product at the end of the day that everyone had kind of had a say in designing. So that worked really, really well. People loved it at the time. It's quite old school now in terms of the way that we approached it. It was super fun as well. And people got really excited about it and had a lot of debates around what was going to be the right approach and what we should and shouldn't add.
24:44Sarah Warman:So that was awesome. And then two that were runaway successes that we didn't really plan for. One was paternity leave. So BrewDog announced a new benefit for its staff whereby you would get a week off if you adopted or bought a new dog. And this went absolutely wild, was not expecting it at all, but I was fielding press inquiries from Japan, from around the world, people getting in touch with me asking me for more information around paternity leave and a small cohort of people being very upset that they didn't cover cats. The clue's in the name, it's Brew Dog, you know, it was a bit of a sort of a, there was a huge amount of dogs that first of all were coming with members of staff to the brewery and kind of sitting on the floor in the brewery so we knew that we had a lot of dog people in the business so we offered them this paternity leave, we had some really cute photography of some dogs at the bar in dog tap so it just worked really well and honestly I would not be able to go a week without having someone somewhere in the world getting in touch to ask me about poor eternity leave I even went on I had to borrow someone's dog to go on sky news to go and talk about it which was fun but yeah that was a runaway success that it's just one of those ones that it's quite a simple idea but it just completely runs wild and you just gotta run with it and another one was the dog house hotel so we launched an indiegogo raise to raise money for the dog house hotel but we only did that because we previously announced that we were opening a hotel in the brewery as a bit of a passing comment in a previous round of Equity for Punks and people really latched onto it and loved that concept so we just completely pulled it out and created its own kind of independent fundraiser for the Doghouse Hotel which was going to feature spa treatments with like hops on your face and you know you could get in a jacuzzi filled with beer and all of this fun stuff as well and the Doghouse now exists in multiple forms around the world and there's like a shower beer fridge which was you know crowdfunded super fun people love it it still gets a lot of traction and people will randomly just create awesome content about the dog dog house hotel as well so it's just another one of those ones where these ideas just come out of nowhere you kind of give them an opportunity to fly and sometimes they will just fly and sometimes you can't really necessarily preempt it so yeah it's always proved to me that you know you can have the best idea it might not necessarily work or you might have what seems like just a a non-idea and actually people absolutely love it so the sort of the learning for me from that is just try it and just see what happens what's the worst that could happen and to be fair to your other point the worst that could happen is you get cancelled and that did you know happen a few times at Brew Dog and I think there are absolutely learnings from when that happened on occasion that are separate.
27:28Sarah Warman:So I think the biggest sort of negative project that I was personally involved in was Pink IPA. So I forget the year, but essentially we announced that we would be protesting the gender pay gap and selling a pink version of Punk IPA called Pink IPA, and it would be 17p cheaper or whatever it was to represent the gender pay gap at the time. And the idea in and of itself is not a bad idea you know the the concept there when you talk to someone about it they're like yeah that sounds great and at the time you know I'd come up with the idea a few years prior at a time when actually Brudel had predominantly men in leadership roles so it wouldn't have been the right thing to do but actually when we did it we did have really good gender parity at a leadership level and our gender pay gap was was diminishing quite significantly and was actually in favor of women in some areas of the business so we had we were justified in being able to kind of talk about this sort of thing.
28:26Sarah Warman:Unfortunately, the way that we landed the message was poor. We failed completely to actually release the message in a way that people understood when they saw the tweet. We underestimated people's keenness to actually click through to a blog post and read the concept in its entirety. And I also personally think that I failed to listen to everyone who had feedback on that concept before we launched it as well. So I think that was an example of one that was completely panned like there was a small number of people who got it but most people didn't get it unfortunately and it was it's now considered one of those like PR fails which is so sad for me because I think that the idea I still stand by the idea I think most of us do we just failed in terms of our delivery so I think you know it is the delivery at the end of the day it's worth showing things to people and just getting a few opinions before you release things out into the world just to see if there's actually something that you've missed just to see if there's a better way to kind of phrase things and to land things effectively like that comms piece is so so critical you can have the best idea in the world but the comms is not there it's not worth doing at all and so yeah I think the pink ipa one is still you know it's still a sad time in my career personally the thing is well it's one of those bittersweet ones where uh it comes up as you said it's the The first one that came to mind for me is like a one that didn't land so well.
29:48Sarah Warman:Yeah. The beauty is it's still getting people talking about the gender pay gap and that whole like the reason the campaign existed in the first place. So although it's not the outcome of the campaign and what it was supposed to do, it still goes, well, why did that fail? What are they actually trying to do? And oh, OK, they were talking about this. Oh, OK. Is that addressed now? So I think there could be some good conversations coming off the back of it. but I think there's plenty of other ones that stole the limelight as you've said I'd love to understand how when you're doing something like this that you're like oh this could go really big what were your methods or ways of getting it to the right people like did you have these contacts obviously if you've worked at a PR firm were you going okay well they know who to get to or I've got experience of knowing where to feed things because I've seen people go let's get on Reddit let's do it on this or let's push it over here I think I had Emily from Nice and when they did the Travis Kelsey lookalike stunt in Sainsbury's or whatever it was basically.
30:45Sarah Warman:Was it Perfect Ted? Well, no. So this is the interesting thing. They basically spoke to Nice and said, love what you did. Like, how can we do similar? So they did it with Sabrina Carpenter. Basically, similar concept of a lookalike, picking up one of their cans, talking about it and pushing it out there. And what Emily said is they were really quick, like with Nice. They did it on a separate account. They did it. They pushed it to the media. then they had like capital radio talking about it being like oh my god like travis kelsey's been spotted buying rose for tater swift in this sainsbury's in twickenham or like whatever it was it was like really like god it talks about but again it's it's knowing okay it's gone now push it out so have you got any best learnings from a pr perspective if you want something to get to the masses like what would would kind of be your first kind of steps of going like right get this in place and do this yeah i think it depends on what it is so if you're doing something that is opportunistic, then you just need to make sure that everyone's on the bus.
31:39Sarah Warman:So if you've come up with something and you've got an idea, you just need to make sure that everyone is in the loop from the get-go so that you're not turning around and saying, oh, can you send out a press release about this? That's not the right way around to do things. So if you have a PR firm or if you've got an agency partner or even if it's handled in-house, make sure that those people are around the table and know the concept, know the timings, know the message, so that they can craft a strategy around that that suits PR and media, and maybe even taps into other cultural kind of points that are relevant at the same time, so that they've got the maximum potential opportunity to actually land that story.
Read the full transcript
32:18Sarah Warman:The worst thing you can do is go for it with a funny, you know, social media idea that you think is great, and not tell the rest of your team who have that opportunity missed, essentially to you know capitalise and maximise the potential of it. I think now more than ever it's so important that whatever you are doing you have to maximise every single piece of the marketing mix within every single thing that you do. So gone are the days where there was a picture story that you might create for PR. Now if you are creating that picture story it's probably social first. You need to make sure that you're maximising your organic content.
32:56Sarah Warman:You need to consider whether there is an opportunity for paid around that as well. You need to look at the PR element of it. There is so much more that you can do with everything that you do. So for me, it would be just making sure that you've got everyone around the table and that you've got all of those opinions and perspectives in terms of how you can maximize that value. And also when you look at the commercial side as well, in terms of your sales team, make sure that they're aware because if it's something that's quite fun, like your example there, it's just nice for them to be able to share things and be able to say, look at what we managed to do.
33:26Sarah Warman:You know, this was super cool. Just wanted to share it with you because it's nice for the sales team to be able to share those with their customers. But also if there's an opportunity, you know, some of those retailers might surprise you and might turn around and say, we want to get involved. So if there's an opportunity to actually involve one of them, then that's another opportunity to get more traction out of this idea. So I think just, you know, eking out every potential opportunity from an idea is so important and making sure that you've got everyone around the table to start with so that they can all maximize and do their jobs essentially.
33:58That's kind of reminded me of the old IPA concept and that collaboration like was this planned was this authentic like how did that whole thing come out because it was genius being like I would have done a version of BrewDog on this new can I think it was done so well and played out beautifully on media so I'm sure you were involved at that time but yeah that seemed like a really fun one.
34:17Sarah Warman:It was and I was not directly involved in that but I was aware of what was going on at the time and it is one of those ones where it was genuinely you know it played out exactly how everyone saw you know brudock had been in talks with with aldi and there was opportunities but ultimately they went with this kind of product that was a bit of a rip-off and was hilarious to everyone but we kind of mocked up the aldipha concept sit on socials hilarious continued the conversations with aldi they're great sports they know what they're doing they're not they're not you know if you watch any of their social media of content they're very very good at leaning in to the things that make them unique so they were just really receptive to it thought it was hilarious and said should we do something together so you know it gave us that opportunity as well from a sales perspective to to create new products and SKUs for some of those key retailers as well and so I think it's just having an awareness for who you're talking to and about and making sure that it's appropriate obviously if you did something like that with a brand who don't find that sort of thing funny you might burn some bridges but obviously with Aldi that wasn't the case at all so yeah I think it's definitely a case of making sure that you're considering your audience um both customer and external but yeah that one was super fun to sort of be in the business at the time and you know it did it did materialize exactly how everyone kind of sees it externally I mean yeah and it worked for me like I was straight away like texting my friends being like oh my god like I need to go and buy this and got some sent it to them and like yes it exists this is amazing I thought it was just so fun at the time and yeah still makes me smile and I know there's been like a Hazy Jane alternative now that's appeared on the shelf so there's it's still going it's uh still going strong still legs I'd love to now dig into you've been you're obviously at BrewDog for over 12 years and what were the kind of things that kept you there was it job satisfaction like what what was your experience like working within BrewDog because obviously you're still working with James of Social Tip and that side so clearly you have a Good working relationship with him.
36:18So I'd love to know anything from your time there and anything you can share around your experience working with BrewDog.
36:24Sarah Warman:Yeah, absolutely. I worked with so many different people at BrewDog, but I absolutely loved the human beings that I worked with at the end of the day. I think that's the thing that made going to work a nice thing to do. So I think the people at the end of the day is the primary reason I was happy at BrewDog. I think also I had become you know over that time the brand changed so much and you know I was a part of that growth and I think that experience meant that I then became quite attached to Brew Dog as a brand because I'd seen it grow up and when things went badly you know you feel that emotionally yourself if you are working in a brand for that long as well so for good and bad reasons you know there's there's a side of that which actually means it's you know it's very difficult to kind of separate at the end of the day but I did really appreciate how connected I was to the brand that I worked for.
37:12Sarah Warman:Brewdog was also really good at getting people really excited about beer so before I worked at Brewdog I didn't I didn't like beer and actually Brewdog changed my opinion on beer as a whole. I the reason that I drink beer now is because of Brewdog so all of that experience that I had led to a change in kind of my attitude towards beer and that then made it a lot easier for me to tell other people you know there's a lot more to it than just you know hops but actually you know what is what does that mean and how does that um how does that um sort of come through as as something that's a great experience in terms of the drink that you have in your in your pint at the end of the day so I think being an example of the ability of the the potential for beer to change opinions of beer meant that it made it was a lot easier for me to understand and then do myself in my in my day-to-day job so I became a certified cicerone beer expert and which was completely funded by Brewdog you know they paid for me to take all those exams and all of that training and that investment in me and my education was was amazing and I mentioned earlier about my childhood had childhood ambition to become a Blue Peter presenter and I actually managed to achieve my dream of not presenting Blue Peter but presenting the beer section on Sunday brunch as a result of the beer knowledge that I came to gain through working at Brewdog.
38:34Sarah Warman:So I had an opportunity to audition for Jamie Oliver's Drinks Tube, which was his drinks YouTube channel. I had my own YouTube channel at the time just for fun, you know, making little beer content. Before podcasts were a thing, I probably would do a podcast now, but I just made beer videos at the time. They're still there if anyone wants to go and make me cringe a little bit about the content that I used to make 10, 15 years ago. and ultimately that led to me ending up on Sunday brunch so I actually achieved you know a childhood goal of being on TV as a result of my career at Brewdog in a very squiggly fashion but you know I think that it also sort of led me down a path that I never would have expected otherwise so I think there's lots of reasons that I enjoyed working at Brewdog but I say the people and kind of the the focus on on beer was probably the the most important things about around that.
39:25no that's brilliant i love the the coming full circle to the tv presenting yeah such a good thing didn't get your little blue peter badge though that was one of those childhood things
39:33Sarah Warman:i need that blue peter i didn't but sunday brunch did give me a tankard when i won an award so you know that's probably better it's more functional than a badge oh yeah definitely gets more use yeah and from you working directly with james yeah how was how was your relationship was there ever times when you would butt heads and be like no i really think we should do this like one of you's like no absolutely not yeah or in general I mean it seems to work really well considering how how the business has grown and how the marketing's always kind of flourished yeah um I think my relationship with James is probably something that just taught me a huge amount about how to work with founders like he is in a lot of ways um a very stereotypical founder he's also not very stereotypical of people in a lot of other ways but actually he has a lot of traits that are very common across founders.
40:22Sarah Warman:So I gained a huge amount of experience through learning how to manage him and how to work with him. You know, simple things in terms of, you know, just providing him with the information that he needs, always making a recommendation. So we'll never tell him something that is a bad thing without making a recommendation as to what we do next. So I think that the element of my experience of working with James has actually been hugely, hugely valuable in terms of how I'm then able to work with other founders now in my career and the stage I've got to now um he once sent an email and was saying let's do x and I sent an email back saying here's five reasons why we shouldn't do x and he said just do it and I said here's five more reasons why we shouldn't do x and he sent me an extra a separate email said we need more oar throwers in the company and you are an oar thrower on this occasion I want you to just do it but he basically acknowledged that I was saying no but in a constructive way and he appreciated that I was actually kind of you know throwing my oar in and saying no but on this occasion just do it and we'll see what happens but he was very happy to accept that I was right when what he has asked for us to do actually didn't work out but I then obviously had utmost respect for that because I'm very happy to go ahead and do my job as long as we have that mutual respect that you know I have that opportunity to vocalize my opinion so yeah I really valued my time working with James I know not everyone has had that same experience and I think he has been quite open and honest with you know the issues that he's had and the scrutiny that he's faced in the public eye as well and you know I don't I didn't have those personal experiences so I can't speak for those other individuals and I think there's been plenty of coverage around that I don't think I need to add anything to that at this stage but I think you know I worked with a lot of leaders at BrewDog James being one of them there are some other incredible leaders at the business that I gained huge amounts of value from Dave McDowell um who's now the CEO at Stonegate he's one of the most empathetic leaders one of the most measured individuals I've ever met and I gained a lot of value of learning from him and and working with him Simon Wright who founded Hawks and which he then sold to Brewdog and then I ran afterwards and I have a great you know relationship with him and post BrewDog Live he now runs Burnt Faith which is a brandy house in North London and he's very school of life and I really try and kind of think more about kind of how Simon would approach things a lot because and he has this real kind of gritty attitude towards stuff and he's such a personable guy I really really like kind of just having conversation with him but you know I get the impression from him that you know there's a lot that you can learn just by doing like that's how he's learned I'm very inspired by that Alison Green was a people director for part of the time that I was at Brewdog as well and she she was amazing and she really invested in me so she helped me identify what career trajectory I was looking for and asked me what are the gaps and I was like finance finance is my gap I just don't have that experience and expertise so she put me on a finance course the week before I went on maternity leave which I I think shows a huge amount of investment in, you know, she's expected me to come back and work on this kind of, you know, the future directory that I'm looking for.
43:40Sarah Warman:And I did come back and she did give me that role, which was I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to own a business division. And she, she let me kind of pursue that when I came back from maternity leave as well. So I think there's a lot of great leaders that have kind of been through the motions at Brewdog. And I have taken away a lot from all of the different kind of people that I worked with there. And then also just the people that I worked with day in day out I think they're the ones that brought color and energy to your day-to-day like all of that you can't you cannot do your job well in a startup if you are a one-man band and you don't have people to bounce ideas off you don't have that camaraderie and that you're all kind of you know working together to achieve something great so those individuals that I actually spent every day with not necessarily always the leaders they were the ones that actually inspired me and kept me going and sort of made me really enjoy what I was doing every day.
44:33No I love that and I think partly why this podcast exists and the reason for getting you on is most people know a version of James's story in BrewDog as a brand but it's it was really great to kind of hear your experience and from other people working within there there were so many people who do I actually go to in terms of what's the best view but I think being the first marketing employee it's such a great kind of scope on living through that whole brand evolution to the global player that it is today just because I'm conscious of time I want to do the final couple of questions um so this is the music one so I ask this to everyone what song best represents your experience in the working world and why I really struggled with this so
45:13Sarah Warman:immediately I thought on a bad day is break stuff by limb biscuit I then also thought of crazy train and got to get through this. Like there's a lot of these songs that came to mind. And I actually asked my husband about this and he's worked in startups, albeit more energy and tech. And he said, things can only get better by D-Reme, which I also think is hilarious. And all of us would understand, but I think it's all of those songs, you know, I can't pin one specific song down, but I think all of them sort of have the same kind of vibe of, you know, we're all going to continue down this path. It's very difficult and we're all going a little bit insane.
45:50Sarah Warman:but we're all enjoying it and we all want to be here at the end of the day. I'm pretty sure it was Katie from Pimento that had Limp Bizkit Break stuff as one of her suggestions. Yeah, good song there. But no, brilliant. And to anyone who wants to get into the marketing, PR, FMCG world, what would some best advice or best practice tips be from yourself? I think networking is really still really important. So, you know, I find that people just want to have a conversation. So don't be afraid. I think there's lots and lots of events you can go to. Lots of brands are now doing stuff where they're trying to do things in person with their customer.
46:25Sarah Warman:So there's lots of opportunities to actually go meet brands, talk to them, see what they're doing. And there's so many new FMCG brands coming up as well. So it's not like we're struggling for amazing new brands to go and kind of look at and potentially get roles with. And I think reading up on the industry is super important. So always read the grocer, see what else is happening in the news around FMCG. And then once you do have a role, super important to continue talking to your customer as frequently as possible. So just understanding exactly from their perspective, how they're perceiving your brand, how they're perceiving everything that you're doing, and actually getting under the skin of that rather than just making assumptions about the information that you're putting out there, assuming that it's landing exactly how you're expecting it to.
47:07Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, totally agree. I live on the grocer these days. I'm always checking it. I'm always wandering the supermarket aisle, seeing what's out there, checking the different areas. Like, yeah, live and breathe it. And again, social and being on there is always a really good start. So for anyone who wants to speak to you or get hold of you, where is the best place to do that?
47:29Sarah Warman:Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very accessible and active on there, probably more than I should be, to be perfectly fair. But just find me on there. I'm just Sarah Warman. Yeah, I'll tag you in the links. And final one, is there a particular Brewdog beer that would be your absolute go-to if you had one pint that you could enjoy right now? Well, it's the afternoon, but it is a Monday. So I think my go-to, when I worked at Brewdog, my go-to was always Hazy Jane. I used to drink a huge amount of Hazy Jane, excellent beer and super consistent as well. Jackhammer was also one of my favourites for a long time as well.
48:05Sarah Warman:I do really like those styles of beers as well. and is there anything else that I thought was brilliant? There was a beer for a short time called Silk Road that I really liked as well, but I don't think they make it anymore. But yeah, I used to drink a lot of beer at Brudog. I still do drink a lot of Brudog beer, but there's plenty to choose from. I hope you've got some sort of lifetime discount wrapped in with your service in there somewhere. I don't, unfortunately, but maybe they'll send me a case just for talking so extensively about Brudog today. Yeah, I hope so. And no, it's been an absolute pleasure.
48:37I think what you're doing from a fractional perspective and all the brands and advice you're doing is brilliant I know you've recently done a panel with my friend Zoe over at Getting to Grow and again she was just like your amazing absolute marketing powerhouse so for anyone who's not already connected or following you go and check out Sarah's stuff but no it's been an
48:54Sarah Warman:absolute pleasure thank you so much for having me it's been really fun and to everyone listening thank you so much we will see you on the next episode goodbye
From the publisher
Sarah Warman was the first marketing hire at Brewdog back in 2013...From a small craft brewery brand, to an international beer powerhouse.
But what has it actually been like working in a business where marketing and PR stunts has been a huge part of their growth?
What are the key lessons and learnings along the way?
What is it really like working with James Watt?
I loved this chat so much. Sarah is absolutely brilliant and diving through her career journey was so great fun - I hope you enjoy it as much as we did
As always thanks to our fantastic sponsor Mission Kitchen!
If you're a chef, baker of food brand looking to grow, then head on over to book a tour at their site in Nine Elms, London today.
Also if you want to build a brand consumers love, you NEED to speak with my incredible new sponsor Against Ordinary - the masterminds behind my gorgeous new rebrand.
They also have a 5-Minute Brand Test to help you uncover what’s working, what’s holding you back, and where your untapped potential lies. Give the Brand Scorecard a go today!
Check out the ever growing Unfounders Song Selection playlist on Spotify.... it's WILD.
Ps - Have you got a guest you'd love to hear from? Submit a guest request form on our website here.
Intro by Free Flowin' from Uppbeat
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/hey-pluto/nod-your-head
Chapters
00:00 Sarah's Career Overview and Current Role
04:48 Transitioning to Fractional Work
10:01 Early Career Aspirations and Education
12:59 Joining BrewDog and Early Marketing Strategies
16:53 Crowdfunding Experience at BrewDog
18:39 Marketing Insights and Community Engagement
19:01 Evolution of BrewDog's Marketing Strategy
21:40 Memorable Campaigns and PR Stunts
26:37 Lessons from Successes and Failures
33:57 Maximizing PR Opportunities
36:24 Personal Growth and Relationships at BrewDog
44:34 Reflections on the Working Experience
46:11 Advice for Aspiring Marketers