Leading digital printer Peacock Bros used its HP Indigo label presses and HP’s Mosaic variable data software to print 75,000 cans of Little Bang Brewery’s Little Bang Hazy IPA beer - each with a different label.
Peacock Bros. has helped Adelaide’s Little Bang Brewery expand its sales volumes from 5,000 litres to 400,000 litres annually, thanks in part to “high-impact visuals of its cans which attract buyer interest,” said a Peacock Bros. release.
“I wanted to turn every beer can into a little sales representative on the shelf,” said Ryan Davidson, co-founder of Little Bang Brewery. “We knew that our business couldn't afford a sales team all over the country pushing our product so that meant the product itself had to be out there doing the selling for us. On the competitive retail shelf, we need our beer cans to be reaching out to the buyers saying, ‘Pick me up.’ And we knew that if we could grab a drinker’s attention for even two seconds, we were halfway to making a sale.”
Little Bang Brewery previously developed its labels through Photoshop, having a labeller print them before staff manually applied them by hand. The process was not scalable as the business grew so Little Bang turned to leading label print business Peacock Bros., seeking an automated solution that produced high impact visuals and showcased the brand’s personality.
“Our HP Indigo Digital Colour Label Presses [supplied by Currie Group] allow us to utilise features such as HP’s Mosaic variable data software functionalities,” said Ryan McGrath, group managing director at Peacock Bros. “The digitally printed labels we produced deliver Little Bang Brewery high levels of creativity and colour variation in the artwork, with the flexibility to print different labels for every SKU. Peacock Bros. is proud to act as the label producer and printing partner for Little Bang Brewery.”
By working with Peacock Bros. and utilising the Mosaic printing functionality, Little Bang Brewery has ultimate printing flexibility, meaning every label can be different, but within defined parameters. The software can keep certain design elements as they are and allow others to be varied creating a dynamic set of labels in a single print run.
“The Mosaic software can keep certain graphic elements the same, while allowing others to be varied with infinite combinations,” McGrath said. “For Little Bang Brewery, this means that the company can develop a dynamic set of labels that can either vary wildly or look similar without actually being the same – attracting shopper interest.”
In an industry first, Little Bang Brewery worked with Peacock Bros. to develop an algorithm that gave every single beer can a different name and printed these uniquely. The initiative was developed for the Little Bang Hazy IPA beer can which has produced over 75,000 different names to date, meaning 75,000 different labels printed in runs of one.
“Peacock Bros. have been a true partner for Little Bang Brewery,” said Davidson. “They helped us develop a flexible digital printing solution that accelerated our creativity and amplified our brand personality that was scalable as our business grew. Standing out on a crowded retail shelf is difficult as a challenger brand and the Peacock Bros. solution helped us to do just that.”
Peacock Bros., part of the Peacock Group, manufactures and supplies thermal and printed labels and cartons, tags, barcode scanning technologies, flexible packaging products and software solutions for over 12,000 customers across Australia and New Zealand. Established in 1888 as a printing business, Peacock Bros. is a fifth generation privately owned and operated business that has grown into one of the largest providers of supply chain solutions across the ANZ region, with an in-house development team and service and support centres throughout Australia and New Zealand.
For more information, visit www.peacocks.com.au
