Storytelling a ‘foundation’ for non-alcoholic beer brand Heaps Normal

Non-alcoholic beer brand Heaps Normal is an Australian start-up success story. As the business grows, chief executive Andy Miller explains the role of storytelling and brand positioning in its growth trajectory.

Andy Miller, CEO Heaps Normal, pictured in Marrickville, Sydney. Britta Campion / The Australian

Storytelling has been a “foundation” for the Heaps Normal brand, according to chief executive Andy Miller, as the non-alcoholic beer brand records 60 per cent year-on-year revenue growth, attained its B-Corp certification in March and is now valued at more than $63 million.

Heaps Normal was launched in the throes of the pandemic in mid-2020 by Mr Miller, brewer Ben Holdstock, brand design expert Peter Brennan, and pro surfer Jordy Smith.

On a mission to change drinking culture, Mr Miller told The Growth Agenda: “We are not trying to tell anyone how much they should or shouldn’t drink. It’s really important to us that we’re not preaching or even holding sobriety up as the end goal.”

In founding the brand, what Mr Miller said he and the team were betting on, however, was that there were other people out there who don’t necessarily identify as sober, but want to change how much alcohol they drink to varying degrees.

Despite the challenging economic landscape, including tightened consumer spending, the no and low-alcohol category is showing signs of growth in Australia.

According to IWSR Drink Market Analysis, no and low-alcohol drinks comprise a 3.5 per cent volume share of the industry. The report forecasts the category as a whole to grow by 8 per cent by 2025. Beer and cider is largest no and low-alcohol category, with non-alcoholic beer set to grow by more than 11 per cent.

In 2021, Heaps Normal raised $8.5m in capital in its Series A funding, off the back of an initial $1.3m from investors the year before. The latest round has since been put towards its growth including its team, up from an initial six to 25, and building its first permanent office space in Marrickville, Sydney, which is in progress.

When the brand launched, retail was its focus and, until recently, comprised the majority of the businesses sales; Heaps Normal is now stocked in more than 4000 retailers and stockists across Australia and New Zealand.

In the past 12 months, wholesale now makes up almost 50 per cent of its business by number of customers, fuelled by on-premises demand.

Heaps Normal also has its sights set on markets beyond Australia and has been distributing internationally for almost two years in New Zealand, South-East Asia including Singapore, in Hong Kong, and in South Korea.

While it is common for businesses to look to the US or the UK as their first outward-bound port of call for expansion from Australia, Heaps Normal tapped existing demand in the nearby region, where a similar non-alcoholic beverage movement is gaining momentum. “We wanted to play in our backyard first; Australia’s still definitely our priority,” Mr Miller said.

Heaps Normal was not the first zero-alcohol beer to be introduced to the Australian market, but according to Mr Miller, building a distinct brand has “played a huge role” in its upward growth trajectory.

Mr Miller, whose professional background spans strategy, marketing and communications roles said: “Brand is the most important thing to our business outside of brewing a really great tasting beer.”

“I think how we influence culture is by changing the kinds of stories that we tell. Being a brand that is not just trying to attach itself to culture, but helping to create that, is super important to us.”

Andy Miller CEO Heaps Normal, pictured in Marrickville, Sydney. Britta Campion / The Australian

One way Heaps Normal has connected itself to culture and built its community is through the music industry, which has been embedded into the brand via a number of initiatives including a music program called Heaps Normal Presents, launched last year.

Recently, it has supported gigs across the country, and hosted its own festival “Normfest” in Sydney earlier this year, where Indigenous artist and rapper Ziggy Ramo headlined.

Other stories also feature emerging creatives as part of its Normal Stories content series. The brand recently produced a four-minute film with Melbourne-based video production company, NiceFilm Co., featuring Gumbaynggirr and Yaegl singer-songwriter Maanyung, who shared his personal connection to country, language and his craft.

Further cementing its ties to the music industry, Heaps Normal has partnered with Support Act, a music charity that provides crisis relief and mental health support to musicians, crew and music workers. As part of this, Heaps Normal will give 1 per cent of its annual revenue in 2023 to the charity.

It forms part of the brand’s long-term plan to use its platform as a canvas for storytelling to shift drinking culture perceptions more broadly – as well as in the music industry and the traditionally heavily alcohol-fuelled culture associated with it.

In addition to these partnerships and events, Mr Miller said the brand plans to retain a focus on authentic, narrative-driven communication.

“If anything, I think we’ll be investing more in that as our team grows, and as we have the opportunity to bring more specialists into our team.

The business uses a select number of channels for its marketing, including newsletters, its website and Instagram. The majority of its content has been seeded organically; the business spent less than $15,0oo in digital and social advertising placements in the last year. A TikTok channel will soon be added into the mix.

“Telling stories is the way that we pass along the things that are important to us, and so, on a mission to change culture of any description, stories are so important in that journey. So we see that as an imperative part of the future of our business.

“We try to think deeply about how we personally feel about something and what we’re observing, and where there’s a gap between the stories that people are telling, and what reality looks like,” Mr Miller said.

As an example, contrary to category expectations, Mr Miller said a few years ago, the team decided not to leverage “Dry July” – an initiative that encourages people to abstain from alcohol for the month.

This decision came from an insight that found some individuals feel pressure to make wholesale changes to their drinking habits and lives in July.

“We thought that there’s a better way, and there’s a more inclusive way of approaching changing drinking culture, where we don’t put that kind of pressure on ourselves, and we just make small changes that are more sustainable,” Mr Miller said.

“That was the story that we told at that time of year. It didn’t sit well with everybody. But we’re also the kind of brand where we’re okay with not everyone agreeing.

“That’s also part of part of the culture change that we would like to see – is that we’d all like to be a little bit less outraged and more comfortable with disagreement, conversation and debate.”

Creativity has also been a cornerstone of Heaps Normal’s success, according to Mr Miller.

“There’s a really strong sense of creativity from a business point of view, when it comes to things like problem solving,” he said.

“And that process that we really enjoy in our team is ‘How do we look at this from a different angle? How do we think about a situation differently? How do we turn a challenge into an opportunity?’ Those are the questions we ask ourselves on a daily basis.

“Entrepreneur is sort of an overused term these days. I think it tends to make people cringe a little bit, but anyone who’s setting out to start a business that has really bold ambitions and is defining a new category or in some cases, inventing something completely new, it’s an inherently creative process. And I think it attracts a certain kind of person to do that.

“That’s something that really appeals to us.”