Changing culture with Heaps Normal’s Tim Snape
What does it take to really understand your customer?
As marketers, we might default to looking at the data. But maybe we’ve been looking the wrong way this entire time.
On this episode of The CMO Show, we’re joined by Tim Snape, Chief Brand Officer at Heaps Normal.
Tim and the team at Heaps Normal are on a mission to revolutionise Australian drinking culture, and they’re doing this by really getting to know their customers.
This is an episode you won’t want to miss – jump right in to hear firsthand about how you can use your brand to win your customers over, one conversation at a time.
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Credits
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The CMO Show Production Team
Producer - Pamela Obeid
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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Transcript:
Mark Jones
What does it take to really understand or know your customers? We talk about this all the time in marketing. We just love the idea of getting closer to our customers. And our default on this journey is to go and look at the data. But what if there was another way? And it's literally right under our nose.
Hello, Mark Jones here. You're on The CMO Show. It is great to have you back with us for this episode. My guest is Tim Snape, he is Chief Brand Officer at Heaps Normal, which is a non-alcoholic beer company. We're going to talk about Australian drinking culture. We're going to talk about the role of brand. And for me, most importantly, we're going to talk about how you get to understand your customers. And I give you the headline, almost give the show away except not. What happens if you, as a brand manager, spend time with your customers in the environment you care about? In this case, pubs and clubs, entertainment venues. There are insights that you get in that space that you can't get in other digital realms, for example. And what's fascinating about this story is how Tim and his colleagues are building a brand that's growing in Australia, but also moving offshore on the basis of real profound human insights. It's a fantastic conversation. Let's get stuck into it.
Thanks for joining me.
Timothy Snape
Thanks for having me.
Mark Jones
Now, this is the second interview we've done with Heaps Normal. Which, just by the way, we don't do that for everybody. I guess you can bask in that for a second.
Timothy Snape
Thank you. Very grateful.
Mark Jones
The reason why I wanted to bring you in and talk about purpose, brands, creating social change, is I couldn't ignore the fact that Heaps Normal has launched a record company.
Timothy Snape
We have.
Mark Jones
This is, for the listener, a non-alcoholic beer company that has a very strong social purpose, and it's got a record company. Tell me what's going on there.
Timothy Snape
Heaps Normal Records launched in October last year. It was really the culmination of years of focus on music and culture and arts. Music's really in our DNA as a business. Our founders, myself, a whole bunch of our team have worked in the music world over the years. When we started, or when the business was started, and as we decided where to focus our energy as a brand, music was one of the natural places for us to play. We know a lot of people in that industry. We've experienced it as musicians, as venue operators, as promoters, and in my case as a marketer. And I think what we saw in the industry is that there's a lot of change required.
There's a lot of smoke and mirrors, there's a lot of exploitation, particularly of artists. The way that the music industry reflects Australian society in terms of diversity and inclusion has a long way to go as well. Over the past three years we've invested heavily in that industry. We've probably supported 500 plus events over the past three years, and that's everything from giving beers to artists so they have a non-alcohol option, right up to running our own music festivals.
Heaps Normal Records was the combination of all of that and us taking a stance and putting a stake in the ground to tackle the label and artist development side of things as well, because there's a lot of shady practises that happen in that world as well.
Mark Jones
You saw, if you like, an opportunity for a brand to become a container for that work, and to give it structure and shape and focus. Which is what brands often do. But actually, just on the positive side, these things tend to start, from my experience, because you love it.
Timothy Snape
Correct.
Mark Jones
And I want to talk about the problems and dive into how you're approaching that in a second. But tell me about the heartbeat of the love for music and the love for the social interactions that happen. Because the through line here, from my point of view, is the non-alcoholic beer and the role that it plays in that world.
Timothy Snape
Yeah. One of our mantras as a brand is this idea of partying on purpose. Music in particular has always been ingrained with drinking culture in Australia. And it was certainly the norm for many years that in order to go out and enjoy a gig you needed to get half cut. And I think that's changed quite a bit in the past few years, and hopefully partly because of the work that we're doing in changing the wider drinking culture.
We look at things like going to see a gig as its own form of wellness, really. We don't often talk about wellness as a brand. We don't focus on the ills of alcohol or how bad it is for you. But on the flip side, we look at partying, the idea of play, seeing a gig, hanging out with your mates, all that stuff is its own form of wellness, really.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Timothy Snape
That's the connection back to our brand is this idea that you can party and play any way you want to without judgement , but the play and the party in itself is an inherently good thing.
Timothy Snape
There's an alchemy to it all that it's hard to get from just sitting in a room by yourself listening to music. You can, but going and experiencing something in real life with other people, that shared experience, there is a magic and a joy, and therefore a form of wellness in that. And that's the kind of stuff that we like to celebrate as a brand and encourage people to continue to partake in, whether they're drinking or not drinking or somewhere in the middle.
Mark Jones
Interestingly, we tend to wear brands as part of our identity. And music creates brands, so bands. And then the alcohol brands, if you think about it, they're a bunch of tribes. I'm going to be very careful here, but certain brands evoke a certain type of-
Timothy Snape
100%.
Mark Jones
-cultural identity in Australia. And Heaps Normal, of course, is part of that landscape. Can you just describe for me, as a brand leader, as a brand strategist, as a marketer, how you interpret that in this landscape? Because you're looking to tap into something that's already there, but you're also trying to shift it. Does that make sense?
Timothy Snape
Yeah. I think you're right in that for many years certain types of music, and in Australia entire eras of music were inherently linked to alcohol. The idea of pub rock is inherently linked to alcohol. The bands of the 80s, like Cold Chisel and INXS and all those bands, they grew up in this sex, drugs, and rock and roll environment, or Australian version of it. That music, it's inherently tied to the idea of going to the pub and sinking 20 beers.
What we're seeing though is a shift in the way that musicians want to live their lives as well. Most of the musicians that I talk to nowadays are somewhere on the journey towards mindful drinking, if not sobriety. That idea that you need to get messed up in order to create art, in order to put in a good gig, I think that's a really dated idea. And I think that scratching beneath the surface, a lot of people are realising that it's been bullshit for the past 50 or 60 years.
Mark Jones
Something I'm picking up in the vein of storytelling, which is a recurring theme on the CMO Show, we talk about it as a tool to engage your customers and to engage your audiences. And I'd like to hear your take on storytelling in a moment. But before you do that, can you give me some reflections on the idea of culture and being part of it? And I don't want to necessarily just give you guys a free kick, but you are part of your audience culture.
Timothy Snape
Correct.
Mark Jones
There's a sense that I'm picking up of being embedded in. Right now, if I look at a lot of other brands, particularly when they come into a new market, a new category, a new segment, they're not native to that space. It doesn't mean they can't compete, that's just how the world works. But it is much different to come into a completely new market and culture that's not, if you like, native, to borrow that term. Whereas, you guys do seem to come from and reflect. Which I imagine would be quite unique in your ability to read the minds, so to speak, of your audience, of your customers.
Timothy Snape
Yeah. We prioritise IRL for everything. We shy away from big broadcast, big paid, big influencer, paid influencer activity. And we spend a lot of our time at venues, at gigs, in the pub, building relationships, talking to bartenders, interacting with musicians. And we've built our brand through those IRL experiences, through those relationships.
Mark Jones
In real life, for those playing at home.
Timothy Snape
Correct. And we're looking at other overseas markets at the moment. I think the cat's out of the bag now that we're looking at the US, and we're looking at building the brand the same way over there. We're not going to go in and focus on building mass broadcasty awareness. We're going to go in there and we're going to build relationships directly with bartenders, with musicians, with chefs, and make stuff with them.
Mark Jones
In brand speak, we would say that's a combination of word of mouth and grassroots.
Timothy Snape
Yeah. I'd say both of those and co-creation, which is a really big part of what we do as well. Whether that's co-creating an event with a venue, whether it's actually making a piece of merch or a product, a beer, or some other liquid product, or digital content. Co-creation is at the core of everything that we do. And aside from helping us build our legitimacy in these spaces, helps us... It's fun. It's fun to work with a whole bunch of different people all the time with different attitudes and different perspectives and different brands, and I think it gives our team a lot of energy. We're not rinsing and repeating big campaigns every six months, we're doing a lot of small stuff. We're constantly changing the kinds of things that we're doing, the kinds of communities that we're engaging with. And that helps to build our legitimate place in those subcultures and in the broader culture of drinking and hospitality and arts, and all that sort of stuff.
Mark Jones
It strikes me that you're not anti-digital, but certainly not favouring digital. And one of the predominant narratives, of course in business and marketing, digital equals scale equals speed, equals growth, personalization, the whole kit and caboodle. That is the dominant theme, if you like. Aside from AI. How's the business going?
Timothy Snape
We're growing really well. We're certainly outperforming the category in terms of our growth at the moment. I think, back to your point on digital, I've come from a digital marketing background. In previous roles, I was almost entirely focused on digital. And I'm certainly not a digital or a performance marketing naysayer, but I think that the pendulum is slowly swinging back from an obsession with performance and data towards brand building again. Long-term brand building again. I can see that. I get a sense that is what's happening out there in the world of marketing and brand at the moment. And it's different for every organisation, and the right path is different for every organisation. But we're certainly choosing to focus on the long-term, as I said, in real life community and culture brand building, rather than the performance and the digital marketing. They're pieces of our puzzle, but they're a small piece in comparison to that longer-term brand building stuff.
Timothy Snape
the thing with digital and performance marketing and growth is it will probably give you some short-term sugar hits. It will give you the spikes in awareness. It will give you the D2C sales. It'll give you those little sugar hits that make you feel great about what you're doing. But we're looking at brand building over a 2, 3, 5, 10 year horizon. And we'll still continue to do that digital and performance marketing activity where it makes sense, but we're much more focused on building a culture around the brand that's embedded in this IRL stuff, and then using the performance marketing to underpin that where it works.
I don't want to suggest that brand is at one end and performance marketing is at the other end and they're somehow mutually exclusive, because they can, and they do work in unison quite well. When executed well. But for us, at least as a brand, we see much more value right now in that longer term brand building stuff, the storytelling, the experience based stuff.
Mark Jones
It's interesting, it sounds to me like a bit of a luxury to think like that.
Mark Jones
How do you afford, so to speak, to have the luxury of that time? That's, again, a counterintuitive narrative.
Timothy Snape
Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to the team. I'm super lucky in that I've got a CEO, Andy, who is a brand marketer. He's come from a brand building background, so there's already a shorthand there, and our CFO is onboard with it as well. I don't, thankfully, have a CFO who's obsessing over monthly KPIs, and is looking at the bigger picture. Which is a massively important part of the puzzle, because I've worked with finance people and CFOs in the past who are, and it's really, really difficult to convince them of the value of long-term brand building. Because you're kind of going blind a little bit, you don't have those short-term metrics that allow you to, hand on heart, quantify the value of what you're doing.
Having that team around us, and even the board, our very small board is very supportive of this approach. They understand it. That is probably the biggest piece of the puzzle. I think if other brand marketers and marketing folks out there had the luxury of being surrounded by people that understand that, they probably do things slightly differently. I think there is, in the world of marketing and brand, a lot of appeasing that happens, and that doesn't necessarily lead to the best long-term results.
Mark Jones
Again, this is a unique dynamic where you're privately held, I presume.
Timothy Snape
I mean, we are privately held, but we do have investors who are vocal and have a lot of experience in the world of brand building in D2C and startup. We have taken them on the journey as well of this somewhat unconventional approach of building a brand, a new brand, a startup. And it's taken time. When I first started about a year into Heaps Normal, we were still doing a lot of digital, a lot of performance marketing. I came from that background. My gut told me that we've got this startup, it's a physical product, so we're going to pull out everything we can for D2C. We're going to pull out everything we can in terms of paid and performance marketing. And I've had my perspective shifted on that over the past few years as I've seen the power of what we're doing in the real world with venues, with artists, with musicians. The power that has on not only building the long-term culture, but in the short-term spikes in brand metrics and in performance metrics has been really eye-opening for me.
[MUSIC STING]
Mark Jones
Let's get then to the storytelling bit. The picture in my head is you at a bar shouting at somebody, just because band's playing, telling the story of why Heaps Normal is here supporting the gig. Is that the context in which a lot of these stories are evolving? I might be completely off-beam there. But how does storytelling work for you?
Timothy Snape
Storytelling, like music, was built into our DNA. One of our brand mantras, which is not necessarily a public-facing thing, is this idea of telling better stories. That was baked into our positioning from before I started. That's based on the idea that for a very long time, when it came to non-alc, the thing that people wanted to talk about was how much or how little you're drinking and why. Are you pregnant? Are you sick? Are you trying to get fit? Whatever it is, whatever that reason is. We prefer not to talk about that because we think it's boring, and we prefer to channel our storytelling into the things that surround the culture that we're operating in. So music, hospitality, culture. What is actually changing in those worlds? What are the new normals, without being too cliché, that we can tell stories about?
As a brand, we focus on people, on movements, on other brands that are actually recreating normal, changing normal. Whether that's how they're operating as a business, whether it's changing norms and cultures in music, whether it's hospitality norms and cultures that are changing. That is, in our opinion, a much more interesting territory to tell stories in than just talking about alcohol and wellness and all that stuff.
Mark Jones
Well, you've got a few different bands that are signed up to Heaps Normal Records. Can you give me an example from there, perhaps?
Timothy Snape
Yeah. Our first release on Heaps Normal Records was a local band called BARB 666. They're a space metal band.
Timothy Snape
And their lead singer is actually one of our earliest ambassadors. He came onboard, again, I think before I even started at Heaps Normal. He's a bit of a local inner west hero, and a whole bunch of these other very subcultural ambassadors that really helped us build the brand in these communities over the past four and a half years. There was a story in that collaboration that we had with him that led us to his band. And the thing that stood out to us about them was the fact that they were doing something that hadn't really been done in the local inner west scene for a while. This idea of a theatrical over the top metal band that are mashing together a whole bunch of different genres. That was a story that we thought was worth telling, and something that we could bring to life in a really interesting and exciting way.
And that's one of the things that's determining how we program Heaps Normal Records moving forward. We want to work with artists who are bringing something new to the table who have something new to say. Who are mashing together genres and creating a new genre. We're not going to go down the path of just rinsing and repeating the same rock band over and over and over again that some brands do. We're going to look at electronic music, metal, country music. And wherever people are changing the way that those scenes and those genres are evolving, those are the artists that we want to work with because there's a story to be told.
Mark Jones
Got it. There are always interesting stories to be told within these different genres, and these bands are doing something interesting and they're provoking something, and that itself becomes this conversation. It's the exploration, it's the discovery, it's the joy, it's the vibe, the moment, the whatever it is. In there is an energy. And we talked about this before we pressed go at this, energy that often drives leaders. What's the next growth horizon for you then in this context? You want to build out this culture, you want to bring people with you on the journey. You want to normalise, forgive the pun again, the idea of how these conversations shift and grow around a brand. How do you scale that out? Just give us a picture of where it's headed.
Timothy Snape
Yeah. I don't think that the way that we've built the brand is necessarily going to change as we continue to grow. We're going to continue to invest in subculture, in local community, in IRL stuff, whether that's experiences, events, making products. That's going to continue to be our strategy. The growth levers for us will be international markets, and we'll be doubling down on our emerging status as the go-to non-alc beer in hospitality, in music, in arts. The way that we'll do that isn't by necessarily looking for economies of scale in the stuff that we're already doing, it's actually just doing more. So it's probably hiring more people. It's leveraging our really awesome sales team who are spread all around Australia and have that direct line into their local communities.
And it's probably programatising some of what we're doing as well. For example, we have a program called the Writer Support program, where if you're a band that's touring or a venue with a green room, we offer you free stock to make sure that the bands have a non-alc option when they're performing. There are examples where, sure, we can find a little bit of economy of scale there by programatising some of that stuff and making it a little bit more streamlined and automated. But for the most part, it'll be continuing to invest in that direct relationship building stuff that's worked for us thus far.
Mark Jones
Yeah, it's always the way in business, some of the most effective stuff is boring.
Timothy Snape
Yeah, 100%.
Mark Jones
When we then moved to thinking about these overseas opportunities, how well do you think the cultural nuances of Australia will play at all when you have to find the new dynamic?
Timothy Snape
I think it depends on the market. There's obviously a language barrier with our name, because not everyone understands what it means in international markets, it's actually quite hard to translate the nuance of what Heaps Normal actually means. Particularly into non-English-speaking markets. For other, primarily English-speaking markets like the UK and the US, there's quite a bit of translatability in the brand and the brand name, and our positioning over there.
Looking at the US, for example, a lot of the brands in the US right now are very much focused on that wellness positioning, so the better for you. You should have our beers after you go for an eight-hour hike kind of positioning. That's not where we're playing. We're playing more in the party and creativity and hospitality space.
Mark Jones
All the fun stuff.
Timothy Snape
All the fun stuff. I think our positioning translates really well to those other markets that have quite similar cultural relationships with those things, with music, with hospitality, with the culture of fun and partying.
Mark Jones
Yeah, great.
Timothy Snape
We see ourselves slipping into that quite neatly.
Mark Jones
It strikes me that this is quite obviously B2C in terms of your focus areas, and our listeners include the B2B categories and segments. What lessons have you learned in terms of telling stories, engaging customers that you think might apply to both?
Timothy Snape
We're actually probably, as a brand team, I'd say almost 50/50 B2B and B2C. A lot of our energy goes into supporting our wholesale customers, particularly independent, on-prem and off-prem, that's where we see the brand built and where we're able to retain and grow that brand equity. You see our beers in the best restaurants in Australia, and that inherently adds value to the brand that then shows up on the grocery store shelf.
Mark Jones
And there's relationships there too, by the way, isn't it?
Timothy Snape
Yeah. And there's really strong relationships. We've built the brand from the very beginning by engaging bartenders, sommeliers, chefs, and getting them really hyped on, first and foremost, the fact that there's a decent tasting non-alc beer out there. But the ethos behind the brand, this idea that it's not about how much or how little are you're drinking, it's not about whether you're sober or not, it's really about being comfortable no matter what you're drinking or no matter how much alcohol you're consuming.
And I think that, again, going back to the culture of hospitality, which is a very boozy, very work hard, play hard culture, what we brought to the table was an unlock for slightly and slowly changing your relationship with booze, and being a little bit more mindful. And that is its own form of storytelling, because it's based on this insight that you don't have to either be sober or go out every weekend and get on the piss. There's this massive middle ground that you can comfortably exist in.
Mark Jones
What do you think is the great opportunity for marketers if you were to lean on your experience to offer some advice in terms of really making their storytelling sing? What's the essence of getting it right, do you think?
Timothy Snape
I think it's insight. I think the best stories come from a-ha light bulb moments. They come from insights. And that in turn comes from just being out there in the world that your brand exists. In our case, it's thankfully going to the pub and just talking to people as they're drinking the beer. Talking to bartenders about who's drinking, who's not drinking, what are people saying about the beer. Talking in our case to musicians about how they're experiencing music culture and the culture of drinking that exists around that, and the culture of partying and having fun.
And a good example of that is in our second year, or first year I think it was, we had a campaign called Just Do Your Best, and it was during dry July. And that was based on the simple insight, and I've already mentioned this, but people often don't want to exist on an extreme. They don't want to just stop drinking for a month or for the rest of their lives.
Timothy Snape
It's really, at the end of the day, all of these wellness things are just about trying to do your best, trying to make incremental changes to maybe make your relationship with these things a little bit better. That simple insight led to a two-year campaign that was centered around this idea of just doing your best. And that resonated with a lot of people, because it took the pressure off them feeling like they had to mainline life for a month.
Mark Jones
Yeah. Be kind to yourself.
Timothy Snape
Yeah. Right.
Mark Jones
That's actually deeply profound. We say in marketing the human truth, right? That's a profound human truth.
Timothy Snape
Yeah, I think it is the best stories come from those human truths, those insights. And where it is a light bulb or a aha moment, that makes it even more powerful, and it makes the story a better story.
Mark Jones
We spoke at the beginning about your love for music and what you think is really the passion for you and your team. Maybe just to start rounding it out, how would you see that playing out? What are the things you're most enjoying about your job now?
Timothy Snape
I think it's the variety. I come from a music background, I’ve been a musician, similarly, with hospitality, I'm a massive hospo foodie aficionado. So being able to just go to restaurants and go to bars and chat to bartenders and have a few drinks, and all of that, again, massive privilege that is my job. And then, we just have a lot of fun. We don't take ourselves seriously as a brand, which means that we can bring our weird idiosyncratic senses of humour to what we're doing, our own lived experience to what we're doing. That is the biggest privilege, the freedom to bring ourselves and our passions and our weirdness to work is the biggest upside.
Mark Jones
For the listener who's sitting here thinking they want your job. They can't have it because you've got it. But they might see a gap between the role they're in now and perhaps a better version of it. The alignment of personal passion, professional passions, all that stuff. What would your humble advice be to encourage them on the journey?
Timothy Snape
I'd say be patient. I'm almost 20 years into my career now, and I spent the first five years at CommBank in a very, very different role. But I learnt so much doing that role that of course didn't feel like it was super aligned to my personal passions and interests. I'm not particularly passionate about the world of banking. But it gave me the bedrock of powerful, big-team corporate experience that has laid the foundation for everything that I've done since.
And I think it was Johnny Depp who said that he does a film for himself and a film for the money. And I feel like my career's been like that as well. I did CommBank and then I went to the Opera House for many years. Which I was super passionate about, and I loved working there, and I got so many great experiences. And then I went to Mirvac for a bit and worked in a suit job again in a big corporate office. And now I've gone to Heaps Normal. Who knows what's next? But I think having a well-rounded set of experiences will help guide you towards your passion, I think. Yeah, I think that's probably the best advice.
Mark Jones
Yeah, and being true to yourself on the journey.
Timothy Snape
Yeah, 100%. Just doing it with your eyes open. And if you sit uncomfortably in a role because it doesn't feel like you're aligned to your passions, just be aware of that.
Mark Jones
We've touched on some pretty inspirational stuff. We've touched on some really awesome insights. We've looked at brand and storytelling. That's a pretty well-rounded podcast. Thank you for joining me.
Timothy Snape
Thank you for having me, it's been a fun chat.
Mark Jones
There's something really interesting about Tim and the Heaps Normal brand, their approach to building a brand and growth over the long-term. And I touched on this, which was this question about the luxury of time. And it strikes me on reflection that we have defaulted into a narrative that says we've got to move fast for all the normal reasons in terms of shareholder pressure and the speed of change, and all these sorts of things. But what we can lose along the way is the importance of a brand that sustains growth over time. That's of course in the brand building game. We want something that's going to last that has growth trajectory that will continue even after you're not in your current job. That's, if you like, the art and science of brand building, and there's a really great story to be told here about what's happening at Heaps Normal.
I hope you've really enjoyed the conversation and taken away something useful. You’ve been listening to The CMO Show, a podcast brought to you by marketers for marketers here at ImpactInstitute and in partnership with our friends at Adobe. Thanks for joining us and we'll look forward to seeing you next time.