Coronado Brewing arrived at our doorstep as a true West Coast craft brewing pioneer, established in 1996 with deep roots in San Diego's surf and coastal culture. But being a beloved local brand and thriving in today's digital marketplace are two entirely different challenges.
Despite nearly three decades of brewing exceptional craft beer and cultivating an authentic connection to the surfing, fishing, and beach lifestyle that defines Southern California, Coronado's digital content wasn't capturing their unique coastal heritage. Their traction on social platforms was lagging and there was zero paid advertising history, posing a day-one challenge of discovering advertising audiences.
The fundamental challenge was clear: Coronado needed both a compelling brand narrative for the digital age and modern marketing infrastructure that could honor their surf heritage while driving measurable business growth. Our focus centered on building robust paid media capabilities, implementing sophisticated audience segmentation, and creating a data-driven testing framework that could optimize spend while expanding their reach.
The results speak for themselves: 164+ campaigns, 6.28 blended ROAS, and sales lifts up to 33% in targeted markets, proving that authentic brand storytelling combined with strategic digital execution can transform even established craft brewers into modern lifestyle brands.
Despite being a cherished West Coast institution with authentic surf culture credentials, Coronado's social presence and organic content weren't translating into measurable business results. Their marketing efforts were diffuse rather than targeted, lacking the audience-specific messaging that could resonate with distinct market segments.
Most critically, they had no paid advertising foundation, meaning they were entirely dependent on organic reach and word-of-mouth in an increasingly crowded craft beer landscape. It was a challenge to consistently reflect the unique lifestyle positioning compared to other coastal beer brands in their creative content.
The key problem wasn't their product quality or brand authenticity, it was their inability to communicate that authenticity to relevant audiences in measurable, scalable ways.
Our alcohol and CPG specialist joined the Coronado team to establish digital marketing best practices focused on audience-first content creation, regionally targeted campaigns, and systematic creative experimentation.
We developed a paid media strategy built around hyper-segmented ad sets that could split performance by counties and zip codes. From this, we could create personalized creative for distinct audience types, surfers, fishing enthusiasts, beach lovers, camping families, and general craft beer appreciators.
Rather than generic product promotion, we introduced strategic brand storytelling that highlighted Coronado's authentic surf and lifestyle ethos.
We delivered far more than advertising campaigns, we built Coronado a sophisticated digital marketing engine capable of driving and tracking authentic business growth.
Our approach launched 164+ campaigns across 300+ ad sets with 559+ individual ads, maintaining budget control at the county and zip code level for maximum precision and accountability.
For the first time in their history, Coronado deployed strategic paid media including targeted brand campaigns and product-specific launches for hero beers like Salty Crew, Weekend Vibes, and their flagship IPAs.
We created custom creative assets for each distinct audience segment, emphasizing "lifestyle-first" content that showcased beach, surf, and camping culture rather than traditional product-focused advertising.
Our video strategy evolved through systematic testing, beginning with longer-form storytelling content and optimizing toward short, social-friendly cuts that delivered higher engagement rates across platforms.
Campaign effectiveness was measured with statistical rigor, comparing zip codes with and without advertising exposure while tracking actual sales lift through depletions data by region. This approach provided definitive proof of marketing ROI rather than correlation-based assumptions.
We transitioned Coronado's website to Shopify, building detailed product and landing pages for hero beers that improved both conversion rates and discoverability for key products like Big Weekend IPA, Salty Crew, and Orange Ave Wit.
Want to know more?
Want to know more?
Want to know more?
Coronado Brewing's transformation demonstrates the power of combining authentic brand storytelling with sophisticated digital execution:
Most importantly, Coronado now operates a sophisticated digital marketing infrastructure that can scale profitably while maintaining the authentic surf culture positioning that differentiates them in the crowded craft beer marketplace.
The transformation proves that established brands with authentic stories can leverage modern digital marketing to drive measurable growth, without sacrificing the heritage and authenticity that made them beloved in the first place.
let’s connect
