Coronado Brewing Co. Updates Famous Mermaid Logo

In an era where logos dominate the consciousness, where a well-placed image can say more than 10,000 words, it’s no surprise that the Coronado Brewing Company has spent the past six months rebranding their image.

The popular redheaded mermaid that adorns their beer logo has been a good fit this past 16 years. However, this month CBC released a new look for the mermaid, one they hope will make the product more visible to consumers and give their entire marketing plan a boost.

In conjunction with the redesign of their corporate logo, CBC has rebranded their bottles and packaging. They have done away with the multi-colored, self-adhesive paper labels on their bottles. Their product will now go through a silk-screening process that prints their new label design right on the bottle.

This was a major labor-saving decision and now allows their brewers to focus more on content and demand, rather than the time-consuming process involved in the labeling of bottles.

The new look for CBC beers will include innovative color-coded logos for each style of beer, framed in black packaging. For example, the “Mermaid Red” will be color-coded with red and white, “Coronado Golden” will be gold and white and “Orange Avenue WIT” will be orange and white.

In a market flooded with thousands of craft breweries and with the horizon full of newcomers it has become an industry standard that breweries need to produce not just good beer, but powerful art to stand out in the crowd.

Beer mascots have come a long way from Keggy the Keg and the Clydesdale horses. In 1996, when brothers Ron and Rick Chapman started the Coronado Brewing Company, their mermaid logo was a breath of fresh air in a market inundated with homegrown, backroom logos drawn by friends or family, or just the guy at the end of the bar.

The original CBC logo had a lot going on. It incorporated an enlarged “C” and “O” at the beginning and end of the word “CORONADO” and was often misread. Inside the letters were images of two San Diego icons – the Hotel del Coronado and the tallship Star of India.

“The mermaid is still the centerpiece in the new logo,” said CBC General Manager Kyle Chapman. “But now the logo is much cleaner and less busy. The revised logo highlights the mermaid and our brewery's name, period. Our intent is to allow consumers to recognize our logo and brand at a glance, to help our product stand out in the growing craft beer market. By eliminating the busy surrounding imagery we’ve streamlined our image. Our new logo is more readable, more visible and a lot more versatile,” Chapman said.

Alexander White, in his book, “Really Good Logos Explained,” says, “A logo is a business suit. It is the way a business dresses itself.”

As suits go, CBC’s choice of the cute Coronado mermaid has been a custom-tailored tuxedo. They dress their business in it at every opportunity. She adorns their large restaurant and brewery in Coronado, their new brewing facility near Tecolote Canyon, their product and packaging. The mermaid logo is all over the Internet, and even adorns a number of employee automobiles.

“You know [your logo] works,” said White, “when non-designers like it and want it as a tattoo.”

The CBC mermaid logo has been so successful that people of all ages come to the Coronado Brewing Company and stand in line to buy shirts, mugs and a variety of other products that showcase the mermaid. Some even shovel handfuls of bar coasters into their pockets to give to friends.

The timing of this major image renovation couldn’t be better. Growth has been phenomenal lately at CBC and the new look ties in nicely with the opening of the new, 20,000-square-foot production facility at 1205 Knoxville in San Diego.

CBC produced 2,700 barrels in 2009. They will do about 8,000 barrels this year. By 2015 they should be turning 60,000 barrels a year.

The CBC award-winning microbrews have been sold in 14 states throughout the USA (Hawaii was just added). The Coronado Brewing Company is also currently selling product in Japan, New Zealand and England.

Prepared by Joe Ditler of Part-time PR.