Back in 1978, two guys—a college dropout and the graduate of a Penn State Creamery correspondence course—started an ice cream company. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield began their business in Burlington, Vermont with a single store. From an original investment of $12,000, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, now owned by parent Unilever, is a $101 billion dollar business. The pair pioneered putting big chunks (chocolate, cookie dough) in their ice cream, which is an interesting story in itself. Cohen, who suffered from a very poor sense of smell, depended on texture in his food to create variety. Putting big chunks in their ice cream not only solved Cohen’s problem, but also became an early brand differentiator (aka B&J’s “Chunky Monkey” flavor).
Ben & Jerry’s did something else from their start that made them stand out. In their marketing, they weren’t shy about their progressive politics. Go to their website (benjerry.com) and you’ll find a whole page on what they call “Our Progressive Values,” where you’ll learn that the company is anti-capitalist, against the “war machine,” and pro peace and justice. Pundits might point out that the American capitalist system they have such disdain for is also the system that gave them their current multi-billion dollar valuation. But as with all things that tend to get political, I plead the Fifth. I’m only here to report the news.
There’s another company that has used its politics to build their brand: Black Rifle Coffee Company (BRCC). You’ll find them at the opposite end of the spectrum from Ben & Jerry’s. BRCC’s values are pro military, pro law enforcement, and anti “hipster.” (BTW, Merriam Webster’s online dictionary defines “hipster” as “a person who is unusually aware of and interested in new and unconventional patterns—as in jazz or fashion.) To that point, in the early days, BRCC’s website offered a downloadable shooting target depicting a man wearing a bow tie and handlebar mustache.
BRCC was founded in 2014 by veteran Evan Hafer, a former Army Green Beret, along with two other vets Hafer had served with in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company gained national attention in 2017 when they countered Starbucks’ announcement that it would hire 10,00 refugees with their own announcement that BRCC would hire 10,000 veterans.
Let’s back up and get a bit more of BRCC’s origin story. Hafer started on a small scale, selling individual bags of his coffee on a friend’s apparel website. He was so successful that he migrated the business to his own site (blackriflecoffee.com), where over time he grew his coffee subscription base to 100,000 customers with blends like “Silencer Smooth” and “AK-47 Espresso”. In addition to a robust online business, BRCC has storefront coffee shops in Utah, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, Montana, and Tennessee. They expanded into Alberta, Canada in 2017 and also invested $6 million in a new roasting facility in Manchester, Tennessee. The company states that 40 percent of their employees are vets. BRCC also believes in giving back to their constituency. During the pandemic, their philanthropic work benefitted both EMT workers and veterans.
Because they market themselves to a very specific consumer, BRCC also publishes an online magazine called Coffee or Die (coffeeordie.com). The site is an incredibly effective piece in their “culture marketing” arsenal, rich in content designed to appeal to current service members, vets, EMT workers, and uniformed cops. It also offers another portal where BRCC customers can buy its coffee, shirts, and other gear. One Coffee or Die article profiles Navy vet-cum-graphic designer Josh Raulerson and his Blackbeard-inspired t-shirt design for BRCC.
When a brand takes a political position, either on the left or the right, it can be dicey. On occasion, BRCC has had to put some distance between itself and the far right. Witness the case of teen Kyle Rittenhouse. Acquitted of murder in the Black Lives Matter protest incident in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rittenhouse was photographed wearing BRCC gear. They also had to pull the artwork for one blend—an image of St. Michael slaying the dragon—when they learned that this image was favored by white supremacists.
Wherever you are on the right-to-left spectrum, you have to admit that BRCC’s marketing is potent. One example is an ad showing an amputee vet shooting a belt-fed machine gun. It’s an image that can be somewhat hard to look at, but that really depends on your politics. If you’re someone who shares the values of Black Rifle Coffee Company, this ad is right on target.
In some ways, it’s hard to imagine a product more ubiquitous than coffee. And in marketing terms, it’s a very crowded category. The research firm Ibis World reports that there are 13,425 businesses producing coffee in the U.S. today. Politics aside, we have to give a salute to Black Rifle Coffee Company for standing out. And if it’s any indication that their blend of coffee and politics is building their business, BRCC just signed a big deal with Keurig Dr. Pepper for distribution of its RTDs (“Ready To Drink” products).
What’s true in combat is true in branding: no guts, no glory.
