Another first for Tuatara

Monday was a milestone day for the Tuatara Brewing Company. With the help of a large crane, we installed our first ever billboard on Cable Street in central Wellington. It’s near Te Papa, the Capital’s number one tourist destination, so we figured there should be plenty of traffic going past and eager to learn something about our beers.

Yes, we acknowledge there are already hundreds of beer billboards all over the country. Some of the best-known ones contain a rotation of witty sayings. Others are pictures of beautiful people in exotic locations. A large number refer to a major sporting event later in the year. None of them really talk about the flavour of beer though.

We wanted to do something a bit different. With the help of our creative team, we came up with a simple design and a powerful message. The billboard exhorts passers-by “don’t just open a beer – open your mind.” That seemed appropriate so close to the national museum. The target market for the billboard is drinkers who are just getting into craft beer or existing craft drinkers who haven’t tried our whole range yet.

The central image is our very cool APA bottle flanked by our best-selling Pilsner and the dark Tuatara of the family, Porter. In all modesty, we think they look great up on the big canvas. Because of the large size, it is quite easy to see the subtle differences in the APA branding compared to the two more established beers.

Like many small breweries, we place a few newspaper adverts and use social media (primarily Twitter, Facebook and this blog) to get our message across. You won’t see a Tuatara TV ad (for a while at least) but sometimes you can’t do everything on Twitter. Sometimes you just need a really, really big sign.

And now we have one. Any feedback on the design is welcome as are suggestions for other affordable billboard sites because we will probably do some more. In fact, we already have a few ideas.

Seeing the billboard up in all its glory has actually inspired the Tuatara crew to do up the ever-reliable brewery van. Currently, it is basically a big white blank canvas but, given the miles it travels on deliveries and jobs, we have decided to treat it as a mobile billboard. Once the work is done, we should be even easier to spot on the road.

For those that can’t see the billboard “live”, we have put up a photo or two. Enjoy!

Cheers from the team at Tuatara