Postcards from the Edge No 25: Help Yourself

May 5, 2020, by James Smith

Postcards from the Edge No 25: Help Yourself

Unless you've been living under a rock (which, now I think about it, might not be a bad idea at the minute), you'll know some of Jessie Jungalwalla's work. Under the Craft Instinct banner, she works with a number of Australian breweries – Blackman's, Hargreaves Hill, Sanctus, Alice Springs among them – and has also worked with us at The Crafty Pint over the years, from our rebrand through to the No Beer On A Dead Planet and Beer For Bushfire Relief campaigns.

And now, as she comes to terms with the impact of COVID-19 on her business, she's looking to help other beer businesses struggling with the unique challenges the pandemic has created. She's creating the Craft Instinct Arsenal – weapons to help businesses strengthen their brand direction and strategy over the coming months – and has also put together the Specialist Sessions as part of the Keeping Local Alive campaign.

Head to the new look campaign website that was launched last Friday and on the SUPPORT MY BUSINESS page you'll find a growing band of experts from various fields – PR, marketing, brewery operations, brand and design, business coaching – offering their insight and advice for free. The Specialist Sessions are something that's grown from a conversation with Mariella Mejia of Made With Moxie.

"In the early days of the campaign, we created an Ideas Pool where breweries and beer-related businesses could share their ideas and thoughts on what they were doing to get through," Jessie says. 

"With the bushfires, we'd found people were sharing lots of information on how to deal with the situation. But with COVID, it was the opposite. Everyone went really inward because this time everybody was a victim, whereas when it was the bushfires there were victims and then others who were trying to help them."

So, realising people weren't coming forward, they decided to create a pool of people to kick-start the process.

"We thought if we had a group of industry advisors talking to people we could find common themes they were worried about and address them in person and then more widely through the campaign. It gives us a chance to address the problems some people might not feel comfortable sharing because they're distraught, in which case the one-on-one approach is more helpful."

 

Jessie Jungalwalla of Craft Instinct.

 

Anyone wanting to book a session can head here and follow the simple instructions. Furthermore, if there's anyone out there who would like to offer their services to the cause, there's a link at the bottom allowing you to contact Jessie direct.

In terms of her own business, Jessie says: "It's based around craft beer and spirits so every impact the craft beer industry feels, we feel as well. Our business has generally about half as much work on as we usually do, but we've been working on different initiatives and doing a bit of work in exchange for beer."

When it comes to the Craft Instinct Arsenal – which you can check out here – the aim is to "provide breweries and other craft beverage industries with tools to get their brand direction and strategy strengthened," Jessie says. "Now is a really good time to sit down and think about that because we can't predict what's going to happen in the future with COVID but we can control our brand and direction and values."

We've also been keeping Jessie busy with all things #keepinglocalalive. Having decided there was a need for a campaign to encourage people to support their local beer businesses the week before venues were closed, she came up with the Keeping Local Alive logo pretty much overnight as well as all associated artwork and promotional assets that have followed. That's included work on Beer Swag Day – announced last Friday for May 23 – while she's been aided by Sergio Montenegro of the @beerstagram_au Instagram account in bringing the designs to life as animations.

"When COVID first hit, Keeping Local Alive was a bit of a saving grace for me personally," she says. "Like everyone else, I didn't know what to do and was quite distraught and receiving a lot of phone calls from clients who were quite distraught too.

"The Keeping Local Alive initiative was an amazing thing to work on because it felt like it was doing something positive and could help when the world felt like it was falling apart. It was a nice thing to hold onto and be a part of, and hopefully makes a difference to the industry that I'm completely in love with."


You can check out the Specialist Sessions here and the Craft Instinct Arsenal here. If you'd like to get behind the Keeping Local Alive campaign and Beer Swag Day, there's heaps of posters, animations and other assets here.

As part of the #keepinglocalalive campaign we're running Postcards from the Edge stories, highlighting the ways in which people are adapting to survive. If you've got a story you think is suitable – or have something to add to the campaign resources online – get in touch.

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