Headlands Brewing

A small, San Francisco beer gets together with a small San Francisco ad agency.

Headlands doesn't think that beer should ever behave like wine. They think great craft beer should come in big, 16 ounce cans you can easily pack out when you go camping. And they think that pretentious people and beer drinking do not go hand in hand. So we gave them the tagline, "big-ass cans of really awesome beer" because that's what they make.

If you’re interested in adult beverages, you might also like our work for Phantom Vineyards.

_Headlands+-+16oz.jpg

  • A friend of ours introduced us to the folks at Headllands Brewing. They were two really good guys who loved beer and the outdoors and the Bay Area.

    We wrote out contract in marker and hung it on the wall. It basically said, Division of Labor will do your advertising in exchange for beer. You keep us stocked with beer and pay only for production. Nothing else. In return, you trust our judgement, don’t change the creative and stay loyal when you grow.

    We shook hands, they delivered a ton of beer and we made an incredibly fun campaign that built awareness, got attention for them and made people smile.

    Division of Labor is one of the top ad agencies in San Francisco, partially because we’re always honest with our clients. We’ll tell you what we think but understand the final decision is yours. However, if we’re going to donate our time and thinking at no charge, then we get the final decision on creative.

  • As Headlands grew, the two founders needed help, so they brought in a CEO and they came to see us. The new CEO had a lot of ideas, one of which involved moving their brewing to Wisconsin because it was cheaper. And for a craft brewery named after Marin County with the word California on their cans, that seemed like the dumbest idea we could imagine.

    Then he started telling us his ideas for the brand. We pulled out our marker scrawled contract about creative control and staying loyal as you grow and we told him we would no longer be working on the brand.

    So no.

  • Hell yes! Same deal goes for any small craft brewery that wants to work with one of the top ad agencies in San Francisco, Division of Labor. Keep us stocked with beer and allow us creative control and it’ll be a labor of love.