Jason Kelce is singing a song that has only two words. For the latest Garage Beer commercial, the elder Kelce has crafted a unique ode to beer for the holidays.
When Kelce was in college, one of his buddies started to sing this song. Soon, anytime they would see each other in a bar, one of them would break out into “Oh beer, oh beer, oh beer” to the tune of “The First Noel.” They’d all quickly join in, and it became a tradition as a call to drink with your buddies.
“The holidays are here, and I thought it’d be really funny to do a very upscale version of it, with a legitimate choir singing that song,” says Kelce, dressed in a festive white Christmas sweater on a filming break last Friday afternoon. “It’s only one or two words, but I thought it would be funny and stupid, which is par for the course for us.”
Filming for this new spot began on Dec. 13th, and it dropped on Wednesday Dec. 18th. It’s Kelce and Garage Beer’s own version of what Ryan Reynolds has coined “fastvertising,” in which brands move quickly to get fresh ideas into culture as soon as possible. This approach isn’t an anomaly for Garage, though. It’s a part of the brand’s advertising strategy.
Move fast and make ads
In November, Garage Beer owner and president Andy Sauer was driving around the Pittsburgh area with Kelce, visiting stores and bars that were Garage customers. That’s when Kelce began outlining a new idea. Let’s just say it involved him channeling his inner Farmer Hoggett to sing “More Than Words,” re-creating a scene from the classic 1995 film Babe.
“That was very much something drawn on from, I’m watching Babe with my kids, and seeing Farmer Hoggett getting so excited singing to this pig,” says Kelce. “And I just thought, it’d be funny if he was singing to a beer.”
Two days later, it was done.
The creative agility is all by design. This is a brand that wants to make you feel a part of a fun-loving social club. Beer buddies just cracking a few. But as Garage expands its distribution from 30 states to 50 in January, the real trick will be to keep hold of its inner weirdo even as the brand goes big time.
Light and crafty
Even before the Kelce brothers supercharged global awareness of the Columbus, OH–based beer, Garage was one of the fastest growing beer brands in the U.S. Sauer bought the brand name from Braxton Brewing in 2021 and relaunched it in January 2023. It grew 252% in its first year to become the best-selling light craft beer in three states. Since the Kelces joined the team as investors in June, distribution has expanded from 12 to 30 states.
With 94% of light beer sold in the U.S. being produced by two brewers, Sauer says the goal was to make a quality product that had the independence and small-scale vibe of craft beer, with the drinkability of a major light beer. “When people picked up the brand, I wanted it to feel like that first beer they had with their dad in the garage,” says Sauer. “You had a category where the consumer from 2007 to 2022 had been buying craft, and craft kind of fell off a bit, and people were coming back to the domestic shop looking for a light beer, and they didn’t see anything independent. And so at that point, when interest in light beer is building again, we just happen to kind of show up at the right time.”
Garage Beer makes everything better 🧼 pic.twitter.com/zoaOyZJmaa
— Garage Beer (@drinkgaragebeer) September 9, 2024
The vibe is working. According to Brandwatch, between August and November, Garage’s social media reach dwarfed major light beer brands like Bud Light, Miller Light, and Michelob Ultra. Garage had 17 million impressions, compared to Bud Light’s five million, and Miller Lite’s 2.2 million. Yet despite these big numbers, the company consists of 14 people. The social media accounts are run by three people, including Sauer. The intimacy of an independent brand is real.
Sauer points to inside jokes like the fake tagline that Garage Beer “goes great with off-brand chips,” or the gimmick one-beer mini-fridge, as examples of jokes that just catch on with its audience. “We’ve been very fortunate that as we entered the market, there was interest, and we just connected with people so frequently and in such a personal way,” says Sauer. “There’s a connection and a way of speaking that I think has built a bit of a tribe.”
The Kelce Creative
One of the things that excited Jason and Travis Kelce about investing in Garage was the prospect of making beer commercials. “It’s still a bit surreal,” says Kelce. “Here’s this stupid song that a bunch of my buddies and I used to sing to each other in college. Now we’re making a whole video of it with a town of people, and it’s going to be this beautiful rendition that will be an ad for the beer company that my brother and I are part owners in. That’s just really, really fun.”
When Jason first told him about the idea for the Farmer Hoggett video, Sauer thought it was just weird enough to work. Part of the brand’s creative process is to believe in ideas that are pitched with passion. “He’s in the passenger seat, like, trying to tap dance, and in that moment, you can just see it,” says Sauer. “I think if there’s passion, excitement, and joy in something, you just have to ride. You just cannot slow that down.”
Kelce credits St. Louis-based director and editor Jordan Phoenix as a key partner. “He just has an eye for making all these ideas actually happen,” says Kelce. He’s a very talented guy who is down to do fun things and operate very quickly.”
Kelce and his brother are no strangers to making fun ads for a variety of brands, from cereal to hot sauce. He knows it’s impossible to please everyone, so his gut check on creative ideas is whether or not it would make him laugh. Another key aspect to their process is how almost everyone in the company is connected to it.
“We aren’t swimming upstream against some other people that we’re trying to get to pitch an idea to. If you’re into it, let’s make it happen. They want me as an owner and part of the company to really run with ideas.”
Sauer says that the brand has daily brainstorm sessions, dubbed “Silly Billy Time” where they just try to come up with ideas to make their audience laugh. “Jason just integrates so well into that because he’s an idea machine,” says Sauer. If you see him, he’s going to be like, ‘I got a new idea.’ And Travis is the same way. It’s just that he is in the middle of trying to win a third Super Bowl at the moment.”
Stay true and scale
The brand graveyard is littered with examples of small, successful brands that weren’t able to manage to scale their culture as the business grew. As Garage looks towards 2025, and expanding into 50 states, Sauer and Kelce are confident they can maintain its independent and intimate vibe among fans.
Sauer says that the explosion of fan interest once the Kelces arrived provided an example of how to handle quick growth. “The most encouraging thing for me is that people who are new to Garage really quickly integrated into the silliness that is this brand,” says Sauer. “So as I think about it scaling, I’m very hopeful, because I’ve seen it already, that people want to propel the voice and tone of this brand.”
Kelce says that as long as they stay true to their process and their voice, then growing into next year will go down as smooth as a freshly cracked can of Garage. “There are ways to grow in beer, in particular, where the voices and the identity of the brand can stay the same, and you can still scale and grow the inventory, distribution channels, and all that other stuff,” says Kelce. “So far, we’ve proven we can keep the voice the same while also scaling.”