Garage Beer was built on a simple belief: social media shouldn’t support the marketing. It should be the marketing. Last year we put both feet on the gas of that belief and won 2025 AdAge’s Marketer of The Year.
In a category dominated by billion-dollar brands with massive media budgets, we set out to make Instagram our competitive advantage, the place where Garage Beer could out-create, out-entertain, and ultimately out-perform companies 100x our size. Instead of using Instagram as a highlight reel for finished ads, we use it as our primary stage: a living, breathing extension of the brand where ideas are born, tested, and experienced in real time.
Our goal was clear and measurable: outperform the biggest beer brands in the world in impressions, reach, and engagement; not occasionally, but consistently. And throughout 2025 we did just that. Every post is designed to earn attention, not buy it. We create original comedy, cultural commentary, fake product launches, behind-the-scenes world-building, and recurring characters that make Garage Beer feel less like a company and more like something you can be a part of.
This approach allows us to punch far above our weight. Despite selling a fraction of the volume of legacy competitors, Garage Beer regularly generates more reach and engagement than brands with exponentially larger budgets and teams.
Instagram isn’t where we document Garage Beer. It’s how Garage Beer lives and breathes.
By treating Instagram as our core storytelling platform, not a supporting channel, we’ve turned social media into our most powerful growth engine, proving that creativity can massively out-perform scale.
Garage Beer treats Instagram like a production studio, writers’ room, and distribution channel all in one. Instead of building campaigns and then posting about them, we build ideas for Instagram, and let the audience decide what grows.
Our plan of action is simple: create original, unpredictable entertainment at a pace and tone no traditional beer brand can match. We operate with a small internal team that writes, shoots, and edits natively for the platform, often reacting to cultural moments in real time. This allows Garage Beer to feel less like a brand and more like a creator.
Our execution spans multiple formats and recurring series that fans actively follow. We launch fake product recalls (recalling our beer for being “too beer flavored”), invent absurd but functional products (like beer-dispensing tools), create cinematic comedy spots with our founders and partners, and build storylines that blur the line between fiction and reality. We also embrace ideas most brands would never attempt: strange characters, anti-marketing humor, and concepts that prioritize entertainment over selling.
This approach has turned Instagram into our primary growth engine. We’ve built one of the largest Instagram followings in beer globally in just 3.5 years, and consistently generate industry-leading reach and engagement; often outperforming legacy brands that have existed for generations.
Our biggest challenge has been success itself. Our marketing has outpaced our distribution. We’ve created demand in places where customers couldn’t yet buy the product. Instead of slowing down, we used Instagram to sustain momentum, turning fans into advocates, retailers into partners, and anticipation into expansion. That demand has helped fuel our growth into a Top 15 beer brand in the U.S. by dollar sales, despite our young age.
What makes our work unique is that nothing feels like an ad. Our Instagram isn’t polished corporate content; it’s weird, funny, self-aware, and human. It invites participation. Fans comment, share, remix, and become part of the story.
We didn’t use Instagram to support our brand. We used it to build one.
Garage Beer set out to prove that creativity on Instagram could outperform scale. In 2025, the results didn’t just meet that objective, they smashed it.
Over the course of the year, Garage Beer generated more Instagram impressions, reach, and engagement than every other beer brand in the world. Not just emerging brands, every beer brand. This is especially significant given Garage Beer is only 3.5 years old and sells a fraction of the volume of the global companies we outperformed. Our growth was driven by original content people chose to watch and share, not massive paid media budgets.
This translated directly into brand and business impact. Instagram became the primary driver of awareness and demand, helping accelerate Garage Beer’s rise into a Top 15 beer brand in the United States by dollar sales. We also built one of the largest Instagram followings in beer globally, surpassing legacy brands that have existed for generations.
The ultimate validation came when Garage Beer was named Ad Age’s 2025 Marketer of the Year; recognition that our approach wasn’t just effective, but industry-leading.
We consider our efforts a success because we achieved our core objective: outperform the biggest beer brands in the world on Instagram and turn social media into a true growth engine. We didn’t just build an audience. We built one of the most engaged beer brands in the world.
