Krombacher: Repositioning Germany's leading lager through brand storytelling

Story Method™ workshop

Germany's biggest beer repositioned for the UK

Building a brand world strategy

Our challenge

Krombacher is Germany's leading and bestselling lager with unmatched brewing credentials: family owned since 1922, brewed in the same place since 1803 using trademarked Felsquellwasser spring water under the Reinheitsgebot purity law. Fifty brewmasters with over 500 years of combined experience work day and night to perfect every batch. The brewery sits in a valley town so defined by its beer that the sign reads 'Dorf des Bieres': the Town of Beer.

Yet UK drinkers knew none of this. While manufactured ‘lager’ brands conjured entire worlds from nothing and craft breweries shouted about provenance, Krombacher with sustainability credentials, brewing heritage and natural purity competitors could only dream of, remained invisible. The brand occupied a unique sweet spot: premium credentials with craft-level authenticity. But it had no voice, no story and no presence in a UK market where world lager sales were up 78% and premium was the fastest-growing category.

Krombacher didn't need a new identity. It needed its real identity shown, told and shared in a way UK drinkers would want to be part of.

The Story Method™

We travelled to Krombach and ran The Story Method™ workshop at the brewery, immersing ourselves in the place, the people and the process that makes this brand irreplaceable. Through our deep-dive discovery across culture, consumer, category and company, we uncovered the narrative golden threads buried beneath the surface and built the complete strategic foundation for Krombacher's UK brand world from the ground up.

The cultural and consumer research revealed powerful signals: UK drinkers were shifting decisively to quality over quantity, with 70% of total beer consumption predicted to be premium or super-premium by the end of 2025. Sustainability genuinely mattered to premium audiences, with over 61% of craft and premium drinkers saying it already affected their choice at the bar. And critically, no brand truly owned the German brewing story in the UK. Krombacher had the credentials to claim it.

The workshop yielded structural and strategic pillars that anchor everything the brand could and should be talking about, as well as signposting and detailing the creative ways to convey its wealth of stories. It yielded a complete world for the brand and its audiences to inhabit.

The result was a strategic blueprint so clear and actionable that Krombacher's own teams could execute it with confidence with every piece of content and activation opportunity crafted and guided by the pillars and brand map we built together.

Building the Brand World

Through The Story Method™, Krombacher moved from invisible to unmistakable. We repositioned the brand inventively around the core philosophy of nature and naturalness connecting ingredients, environment and authentic social moments into a living brand world grounded in truth rather than manufactured identity.

Rather than relying on generic outdoors imagery or the tired tropes of German beer marketing, we conceived ambitious campaign ideas: from film series following real UK outdoor communities defined by their connection to water and nature, to bringing Schützenfest to British pubs as a Krombacher-owned alternative to Oktoberfest.

The content strategy we built positioned Krombacher as the thinking drinker's choice: premium without pretension, German without cliché, sustainable without greenwashing. Every piece of content, from foundational social to ambitious multi-stage campaigns, aligns with the strategic pillars and builds the brand consistently across every touchpoint.

By focusing on what Krombacher represents rather than simply what it brews, we created a brand world where 200 years of heritage meets a fresh, contemporary voice. The strategy gives Krombacher the tools to do what manufactured competitors never can: tell a story that's completely, verifiably true.

The Story Method™

Building the Brand World

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Mapping the road ahead for a beer legend.

Krombacher: Repositioning Germany's leading lager through brand storytelling

Our challenge

The Story Method™

Building the Brand World

London:

Email:

Harrogate:

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