Case Study: The WestBean | San Diego

Visually Branded: The WestBean Gets Social

How we energized this coffee feed with consistent, engaging content.
No matter how much coffee one consumes, there’s still only 24 hours in a day. That’s why The WestBean Coffee Roasters looked to us to help manage their social platforms. They were busy running two cafes and opening a third, and simply didn’t have the time to curate and oversee multiple online accounts.

Instagram and Facebook are great promotional tools for most businesses. For some, they are INVALUABLE. Coffee shops are one of those extremely “Instagrammable” businesses, making the need for a carefully curated feed even more important.

When Coast Creative joined The WestBean, time was their #1 roadblock to creating a Facebook and Instagram presence that reflected their brand. Our goal: Present an accurate depiction of WestBean on social media. Our strategy: Capture more content on a regular basis, inspire more user-generated content (UGC), and use social media to promote monthly promotions/campaigns.

From strategy, we moved to execution of regular photo shoots, contest creations and strategic posting. Photo shoots rotate between their three cafes—downtown San Diego, Liberty Public Market and Banker’s Hill—and the content is spread in a way that never becomes too repetitive.

When visitors land on @thewestbean, they see the brand as the owners originally intended: clean, minimalist and slightly more masculine than most other area coffee companies.

Additionally, by visually branding their social accounts, we could assure that customers were seeing the same brand on social as they did online and in house.

We achieved visual consistency by setting photography, composition and editing styles. To really drive home that consistent look, we even branded their social graphics—which now enjoy some amazing engagement rates.

Our regular cadence of posting creative, yet branded imagery is their key for social success and building real-world awareness in and outside of San Diego.

The Takeaway: The WestBean Coffee Roasters already had a great brand. They just didn’t have the time (how many of us do?!?)  to translate that to social media. For those going it alone, save yourself the headache of posting one-off shots. Get batches of (this is key!) ON BRAND photos at one time. When you snap a photo here and there, it definitely takes more time (more mental energy) and tends to lead to a less cohesive feed.