Case study · Food & Drink · Corporate reputation
Keystone Brewing Group was rescuing much-loved breweries, but the trade press saw a private equity owner. We ran its corporate press office and thought leadership, repositioning the group as a category leader and halving negative sentiment in its coverage.
- 70+ corporate coverage pieces
- 16% to 8.7% negative sentiment
- 95% positive or neutral coverage
- 56.6M combined reach in 12 months
- Client Keystone Brewing Group
- Sector Food & Drink
- Services Corporate press office, thought leadership, issues management, CEO profiling
- When January 2024 to 2025
- Audience Drinks trade, business media, industry partners
- Brands Black Sheep, Purity, Big Drop, Hofmeister and more
What did Keystone need?
Keystone Brewing Group was buying much-loved breweries out of administration and giving them a future. The trade press told a different story, focused on private equity ownership, closures and job losses. A restructure, a relocation and a leadership change all happened in public view.
- Business objective: support portfolio growth through acquisitions and partnerships by showing the market a stable, credible owner.
- Communication objective: establish the Keystone brand, tackle misinformation and shift the narrative towards growth, innovation and quality.
What was the insight?
An owner is judged by what happens to the breweries it buys. The strongest answer to “private equity” was the evidence: brands being invested in, winning listings and making news for the right reasons, with a chief executive who could speak as a brewer, not a financier.
What did we do?
- Counselled on every sensitive announcement, from acquisitions to restructuring, so the group told its own story first.
- Ran a corporate press office for acquisition news, interviews and forward features in titles including Just Drinks, The Grocer, The Morning Advertiser and Global Drinks Intel.
- Profiled the CEO, Steve Cox, in the trade press and on LinkedIn, alongside Keystone’s own LinkedIn page.
- Let the brands make the case. Brand PR ran alongside the corporate work, from Black Sheep Brewery as “the best of British” in The Independent to Big Drop in the FT.
What did it achieve?
Results by stage of the AMEC evaluation framework, with the source for each figure.
| Stage | Measure | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outputs | Corporate coverage | 70+ pieces | Prohibition coverage log |
| Outputs | Group and brand coverage, 12 months to spring 2025 | 501 pieces | Prohibition annual review |
| Outputs | Combined reach, same period | 56.6M | Prohibition annual review |
| Out-takes | Positive or neutral sentiment | 95% | Prohibition annual review |
| Out-takes | Negative sentiment in coverage | Down from 16% to 8.7% | Prohibition coverage analysis |
| Impact | Portfolio | 11 brands supported across the group | Keystone |
What did Keystone get from it?
A reputation that matches what it does. Coverage moved from ownership and closures to acquisitions, investment and brand success, giving Keystone a credible platform as it brought more breweries into the group.
What did we learn?
- Get in front of the story. Sensitive news lands better when the company tells it first and explains why.
- The CEO is the message. A visible, knowledgeable leader answers ownership questions better than any statement.
- Brand wins build corporate credibility. Every good brand story was evidence for the group.
- What we would do differently: set clear communication KPIs at the start. The group grew so fast that objectives had to catch up.
