What do pirates, Al Capone, and getting your name and trademark have to do with Sleeman’s beer?

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Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here with you alongside Stephen Semple. Today, Stephen, as we head into year two of the podcast, you told me the topic, and I have never heard… I’m assuming we’re back to Canada products.

Stephen Semple:
We’re back to Canada, yes.

Dave Young:
This is Sleeman’s Beer. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t love the name. I hope I love the story because the beer sounds like a product that maybe Bart Simpson would order it at the bar when he goes in: “Give me a bottle of Sleeman’s.”

Stephen Semple:
After you hear this story, you’re going to be begging me to bring a case of this beer down for you.

Dave Young:
Well, I expect you to.

Stephen Semple:
Maybe we’re talking about beer today because living in Canada in the summertime, and I’m here on the lake, the other night, I was sitting out and just enjoying one of those beautiful evenings in Canada. You know what I was drinking? I was drinking a bottle of Sleeman’s Cream Ale, which is actually one of my favorite beers, and I’ve loved it for a long time. I said, “You know what? I need to tell the story of this beer because it’s an awesome, awesome story.” That’s kind of where it all started was that inspiration. It was originally started in 1834 by John Sleeman.

Dave Young:
Holy cow, that’s a while back.

Stephen Semple:
99 years later, in 1933, it was shut down, and then opened again by the great-great-grandson, the fifth-generation brewer, John Sleeman, in 1988, 55 years after being shut down.

Dave Young:
Wow.

Stephen Semple:
In 2006, 18 years after reopening, it was sold to Sapporo for $400 million, and today is the third-largest brewery in Canada. So it’s really quite a journey.

Dave Young:
That’s amazing.

Stephen Semple:
The Sleeman family name was originally Slyman.

Dave Young:
Slyman?

Stephen Semple:
In the 1600s-

Dave Young:
Yeah, that’s better

Stephen Semple:
You’re going to love this. In the 1600s, the Slyman family were pirates running illegal ventures out of England.

Dave Young:
Of course they were.

Stephen Semple:
Of course they were.

Dave Young:
Why wouldn’t they be?

Stephen Semple:
This is documented. They were privateers. They were pirates. By the middle of the 1800s, they decide to go legit and invest in something they really liked, beer!

Dave Young:
Why not?

Stephen Semple:
Because what pirate doesn’t like beer? So they started a brewery and a string of pubs in England. At that time they changed the name from Slyman to Sleeman because they wanted to get away from their pirate past.

Dave Young:
That whole pirate background thing.

Stephen Semple:
That whole pirate background.

Dave Young:
You wouldn’t want people to think that you were the same family.

Stephen Semple:
Exactly, as who pillaged them the year before.

Dave Young:
Just change the vowel.

Stephen Semple:
In 1834, John Sleeman moves to Canada. He arrives in St. Catharine’s from Cornwall, England, and he starts a brewery called Stamford Springs. He operated this brewery for 20 years quite successfully. But this was the time of the Industrial Revolution, and due to industrialization, the water in the St. Catherine’s area became heavily contaminated, and they couldn’t make beer with it any longer. So they moved to Guelph, and that was a good move. As I mentioned earlier, they’re very successful for 99 years in the Guelph market.

They were also a big deal. In 1880, one of the family members, George Sleeman, became mayor of the area. In 1889, his son, George Junior, became an apprentice. He writes down all the beer recipes in a little recipe book, and this becomes really important later. So fast forward to 1921 and along comes Prohibition and a dude by the name of Al Capone. It’s rumored that Capone does business with the Sleemans. In 1933, the Canadian government shuts down the brewery for not paying taxes on the beer they bootlegged to the United States.

Dave Young:
Oh, no.

Stephen Semple:
Just like how Al Capone got brought down for tax evasion, the Sleeman’s family got dragged down with this as well. Remember how I said they were closed down for 55 years?

Dave Young:
Yeah.

Stephen Semple:
In addition, they were forbidden from brewing beer for 50 years.

Dave Young:
They can do that?

Stephen Semple:
They did in 1933.

Dave Young:
Wow.

Stephen Semple:
The family was embarrassed by this past, and this heritage was actually buried. Here’s where it gets fun. John Sleeman, now this is now a John Sleeman five generations removed from the original John Sleeman, think about this, who had no idea about the family heritage. He had no idea. He talks about this. No idea of the family heritage. Moved to London, England, where he fell in love with English pubs, so he decided to return to Canada and bring this beer with him. So John Sleeman brings English beer to Canada five generations and 150 years after the original John came to Canada bringing beer from England. In 1978, John opens his own British-style pub called the Major Oak, and then becomes a partner in the imported beer company where they import English beer. It’s super successful. He becomes a millionaire doing this business. Then one day his Aunt Florian shares the family history with him.

Dave Young:
Oh my gosh.

Stephen Semple:
Remember George Junior’s recipe book?

Dave Young:
Yeah.

Stephen Semple:
The aunt still has it.

Dave Young:
Oh, that’s amazing.

Stephen Semple:
Isn’t that amazing? So here’s John, 31 years old, he has this successful beer business, and his aunt wants him to open the old business. John really doesn’t want to do it.

Dave Young:
Really?

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. He says to his Aunt Florian, “First problem, the family no longer owns the name Sleeman’s Brewery. Standard Brands owns it, so I can’t open the business.”

Dave Young:
Wow.

Stephen Semple:
Good old Aunt Florian convinces him to talk to Standard Brands. And guess what?

Dave Young:
They agree to give it back to him.

Stephen Semple:
They don’t need it, so he’s got the name back. Says, “Okay, well, the next problem, you want me to really do this,” John says, “you want me to really follow the family heritage, I can’t use the old logo because it was a beaver and a maple leaf, and Canadian Pacific Railway owns that. There’s no way they’re going to let me do that.” So John approaches them and they said, “Great idea!” They give them the trademark back.

So reluctantly, John started the brewery because he really got sucked into this whole heritage, like the family heritage was that draw, and we know that that’s a big pull. Look what happened with Uncle Nearest Distillery where Fawn Weaver, backing up… Fawn Weaver, who was not even a member of the family, as she discovered this heritage of Nearest Green distilling whiskey, said “Man, we’ve just got to do this.” When you get exposed to these heritage, it’s a really strong pull. So John Sleeman decided to design a beer bottle. I’m holding it up here.

Dave Young:
I noticed, when you showed me this just before the show, that there’s no label on that bottle. It’s a glass molded bottle. There’s a label around the neck. It’s got the logo embossed in the glass, molded right in.

Stephen Semple:
Molded right in, and that’s what they originally did. So he went back and he did that. He went to the recipe book, flipped through the recipe book, and on Page 64 he found Cream Ale. He said, “This is the one we’re going to launch with.” The fun part is, you know how we talk about specifics or better than generalities, they had ads where they would literally talk about it was Page 64, the recipe book. They didn’t just say, “Oh, found it in the recipe book.” It was Page 64 of the recipe book because it just made it so much more real. You can see YouTube videos interviewing him where he pulls out the recipe book and he still has the recipe book. He really, really leveraged the family history in those ads. What I’m going to do is I’m going to share a couple of those ads with you right now.

Dave Young:
Did he leverage the piracy and all of it?

Stephen Semple:
The whole thing: Al Capone-

Dave Young:
Good for him.

Stephen Semple:
… the piracy, the absolute whole nine yards.

Ad 1:
Every bottle of Sleeman has a past, a dangerous past, pirates, pirate who changed their name from Slyman to Sleeman, took their ill-gotten treasure and invested in something they really liked, beer. It’s a past some people think we should hide, but we won’t because it’s true. And like the beer it brought, it’s notoriously good.

Ad 2:
Every bottle of Sleeman has a past, a shady past. When Prohibition hit the US opportunity knocked for Sleeman. They made a fortune smuggling beer into illicit joints, off the beaten path and outside the law. It was a good racket, except when it came to last call. It’s a past we refuse to cover up because it’s true. And like the beer it brought, it’s notoriously good.

Stephen Semple:
Now that you’ve watched those ads, what do you think of them, Dave?

Dave Young:
They’re fabulous. They spawned a slogan, “notoriously good.” That’s-

Stephen Semple:
Notoriously good.

Dave Young:
… amazing.

Stephen Semple:
Isn’t that just brilliant?

Dave Young:
To lean hard on that heritage now that all of the “embarrassed” parties are gone, you don’t have to worry about that. You’re not the one that sold illicit beer during Prohibition. You’re not the one that was a pirate.

Stephen Semple:
Well, we all want to be a little bit of a rebel. Other than Jerry Seinfeld-

Dave Young:
Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
… we all want to be pirates. Remember that Jerry Seinfeld, “I don’t want to be a pirate.”

Dave Young:
Here’s-

Stephen Semple:
But I really do want to be a pirate.

Dave Young:
Here’s the really cool thing about it is they’d been gone long enough that nobody remembered them.

Stephen Semple:
Right, even he didn’t know about it until his aunt.

Dave Young:
If you don’t lean into the family history in the ads, you have no position other than just one more startup beer brand with a weird name.

Stephen Semple:
The other part that I loved in it was they’re telling this outrageous story, and he goes, “And it’s true, and it’s true. I actually want to make sure that you know I’m not making this up. It’s true. And this beer is notoriously good.” How do you not want to try this beer because of this association? Even the way he delivers it, he really owned it. Brilliant campaign. The thing that I want people to realize when they look at this campaign, it seems so obvious, there’s this amazing family history. Tell the story, it’ll make great ads. But it is not that easy. We know, for example, there were a Wizard of Ads client until the business sold, Goettl Air Conditioners.

Dave Young:
Absolutely, yeah.

Stephen Semple:
They were around a long time. Before they approached Roy Williams to run ads for them, they worked with a lot of big name agencies. There’s a fabulous story that Roy uncovered and told. This is a story any agency could have told but chose not to. We have a client, Mother’s Brewery. Again, they worked, before hiring us, with one of the largest craft brewer agencies out there. They have this incredible story where his mother loves coming and helping out at the brewery and she hates beer. She can’t understand why people drink the stuff. There are stories of her pouring beer and handing it to people going, “Do you really like this?” That’s a great story to tell. Mother’s Brewery and the mom doesn’t like beer.

Dave Young:
People don’t understand the power of things like that. When we do an uncovery where we sit down for a day or two with a business owner, I often get asked, “Well, what kinds of questions? What kind of things are you looking for? We’ve got our profit and loss. Here’s what we sold last year, and here’s the ads that we’ve run before.” I’m like, “I’m never looking for that stuff. It’s sort of immaterial.” What I’m looking for, we call it an unleveraged asset, and it’s often a story like that. It’s so important to just spend some time sitting at lunch and having a glass of wine or a bottle of Sleeman’s-

Stephen Semple:
A bottle of Sleeman’s.

Dave Young:
… and hearing those stories. Because what the business owner thinks is just, “Oh, well, that was just me holding a flashlight for Dad.” Well, that becomes-

Stephen Semple:
That becomes the ad.

Dave Young:
… the story. That becomes the unleveraged asset that you can turn into a fantastic ad campaign.

Stephen Semple:
Did you notice that the Sleeman beer commercial, the two that I shared with you, the ads were not about the beer? They didn’t talk about the ingredients, didn’t talk about the brew, didn’t talk about… Now, they do have later ones where they talked about Page 64. But again, even talking about the beer, about the aunt finding the recipe book and him turning to Page 64, it’s about–

Dave Young:
Yeah, nothing that has to do with the beer.

Stephen Semple:
Right, right, but it made us emotionally want to try this beer.

Dave Young:
I think that’s the power. You and Gary Bernier and I have done a couple of little videos about whiskey. All three of us are whiskey sommeliers. One of the things that I tell people, I’m a whiskey sommelier because I graduated from the Whisky Marketing School, which I am the vice chancellor of. I needed to do that before they would hire me as vice chancellor, so I did. But I am the least expert whiskey sommelier there probably is because I got through it, but it’s not my everyday thing. But I have a half a dozen whiskeys that I love telling stories about. Most whiskey connoisseurs will go, “Well, that’s basic whiskey. Nothing special about that.” It was like, “No, it’s special to me, and let me tell you the story. When I’m done telling the story, we’re going to raise a glass of this to my dad because it was his whiskey.” That’s a powerful story.

Stephen Semple:
That is a powerful story.

Dave Young:
To me, you can elevate a mediocre brand with a powerful story.

Stephen Semple:
If people want to uncover their story, here’s what they can do. Here’s the challenge to figuring out the story. You can’t do it in 15 minutes. You can’t do it in 30 minutes. You can’t do it in 90 minutes. Dave, we’ve all experienced this. Meet with the customer, and what do we do in the morning? In the morning, we let them talk about all the things that they need to talk about. It’s important because they got to offload all of those things. Then we go for a nice lunch, have some drinks, and it’s after we return from lunch when they’ve exhausted all the things that they want to talk about-

Dave Young:
All the things they think we need to know.

Stephen Semple:
There’s things that we should know, and I respect that. But the stories always come out in the afternoon. If people want to uncover their story, what they can do is they can go to the Empire Builders Podcast website. They can click on a link. They can book time to have a quick conversation. Then they can book a day with us, so we’ll have all of the details on there for that day. Here’s what I’m going to tell you. When you spend a day with us, and the other guarantee…

You got two choices. You can come to Toronto and spend the day with me and a partner, or you can come down to Austin and spend a day with Dave and a partner. So the choice is yours. You can go either way. You will have a story at the end of that day because it takes a day. It takes a full day to find those stories. Any marketing agency, any advertising person who spends less than a day with you is not going to find the magic. David Ogilvy found the magic for the Rolls-Royce ad. Go back to listen to Rolls-Royce. He found it at the end of the day as he was walking out of Rolls-Royce and had a chance conversation with a fricking mechanic. It takes a day.

I was doing an uncovery with a guy who owned a golf course. It wasn’t until the end of the day that we found out he built the golf course. I went, “What do you mean built the golf..?” “Oh no, I’ve got pictures here of me moving the dirt around operating the heavy equipment.” I was like, “Are you fricking kidding me? You actually built this course, like built it?” He goes, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was out there every day.” He had worked with tons of people before, and no one ever told that story. Soon as he started telling that story, people believed this golf course was awesome and this guy was dedicated to it being the best.

So if you want to find your story, give us a call. We’ll help you find that story. Because what I know is, as soon as you see the stories, it seems obvious. It was not obvious. Because how many times do we hear great stories in advertising? Rarely. How many businesses have great stories? All of them.

Dave Young:
You know what? Those uncovery days, those one days, it’s my favorite part of this job.

Stephen Semple:
It’s fabulous.

Dave Young:
Once we get into running the campaign and the day to day, month to month, it is like, “Nah, I wish we could go back and do another uncovery.”

Stephen Semple:
I got to share one last thing about John Sleeman before we sign off. John Sleeman, one of the things he talks about, his big weakness today is now cars, and his favorite is Ferrari, Maserati, and here’s where I love him, and Porsche.

Dave Young:
Well, he got $400 million.

Stephen Semple:
He got $400 million. He whips around on the track these days with his Ferrari, Maserati, and Porsche. So I love the dude.

Dave Young:
I hope that he gave Aunt Florian a little taste of that $400 million-

Stephen Semple:
That would be cool.

Dave Young:
… because, man, without her he wouldn’t have any of it.

Stephen Semple:
Look, she held onto all of this stuff. Look, at the 50-year mark, because they started 55 years after and they had to do all this stuff, I bet you it was on the 50-year mark that she walked up to him and said, “We can do this now. Let’s do this.”

Dave Young:
Yeah, yeah. Because we can, we must.

Stephen Semple:
We can, we must. It was a fun story. I thought you would enjoy it. It’s summertime. Let’s all enjoy a Sleeman. Before we go, how do you now feel about the name, Sleeman?

Dave Young:
I love it.

Stephen Semple:
Right? What did I tell you at the beginning?

Dave Young:
Without any context, it’s terrible. If you just threw it out as a possible name for a beer, people would go, “Ew, I don’t think so.”

Stephen Semple:
Now, if you met this guy and he wanted to call it anything but Sleeman’s, what would you say to him?

Dave Young:
He’s an idiot.

Stephen Semple:
Isn’t that interesting? At the beginning you’re like, “I hate the name. If we focus-grouped the name, everybody going to hate the name.” Now you’re like, “Oh, yeah. You can’t call it anything other than Sleeman’s.”

Dave Young:
Yep.

Stephen Semple:
All right, awesome. Thanks, David.

Dave Young:
Thank you, Stephen. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big, fat, juicy five star rating and review. If you have any questions about this or any other podcast episode, email to questions@theempirebuilderspodcast.com.

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