Brewery Branding for Regional Disruptor
Lead Dog Brewing: Before working with Commence Studio, Lead Dog was acquired by Mammoth Brewing. We rebuilt the brand and the customer-facing system to match where the company was actually going.
Live since 2023
Scalable Branding
Lead Dog Brewing operates in food & beverage · retail & lifestyle — a category that demands its own kind of attention from the brand and the buyer journey both. The work that got the company this far had earned its market share. The brand and digital surface area weren’t carrying the weight at the same level the rest of the operation was.
Before working with Commence Studio, Lead Dog was acquired by Mammoth Brewing. Prior to the acquisition, Lead Dog’s artwork was done by ad-hoc artists from Fiverr, and it lacked cohesion and a brand narrative across the products.
With 24 rotational beers, and a desire to create brand hierarchy/equity from release to release, they needed better brand and packaging systems to scale out their rapid Limited Time Offerings.
The brief was a system rebuild — the kind of work captured in our master frame: A Full-Service Solution. Brand strategy, identity refresh, customer-facing experience design, and the post-launch measurement framework that lets the in-house team extend the work without us in the room.
A Full-Service Solution
Market Research
Our process began by working with their internal VP of Marketing to gather Nielson data and user research/surveys to understand what people want in the craft beer market and their experience of existing Lead Dog products.
Brand Platform
Commence Studio created a brand pillar to feature local Reno artists and collaborate on limited release packaging, and merchandise.
Logo Design & Scalability
The primary challenge was to create brand recognition in the taprooms and retail stores that carry Lead Dog’s beer.
Custom Beer Cans
As Lead Dog’s identity revolves around its experimental and creative craft beer brand, it was essential to create packaging designs that reflect these attributes.
Editorial-led storefront that earns time on site.
PDPs lead with brand story, lifestyle context, and product detail before the spec table — turning visitors into engaged buyers.
Bundle merchandising that lifts AOV.
Outfit-builder modules, complete-the-kit upsells, seasonal landing pages organized by use case — drove the AOV lift against category benchmarks.
The brand and the operation now run at the same level. The system extends without us in the room — exactly the kind of partnership we were looking for.
Engagement summary · Lead Dog Brewing × Commence Studio
Numbers that matter for the engagement.
Brand and storefront, in production.
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A 14-day strategic diagnostic — we audit your current stack, identify the friction worth fixing first, and ship a phased plan with sized investments. Fully credited toward an engagement if we move forward together.
What you walk away with
- ✓A measured map of every friction point in your current commerce flow
- ✓Three phased options — minimum, considered, comprehensive
- ✓Sized investments and timelines, no aspirational ranges
- ✓A clear "don't hire us if…" section. We mean it.
