Recently, Samuel Adams released the latest version of its Utopias beer, a limited edition that clocks in at roughly 30 percent alcohol by volume – about four to five times the alcohol content of a conventional beer.

Utopias is sold in a ceramic bottle for around $240, is produced in very small quantities, and is illegal to sell in roughly fifteen U.S. states because of its elevated alcohol content.

At first glance, that looks like a business error. A third of the country can’t legally buy your product? A conventional strategist might reasonably ask, “What were they thinking?” But that reaction misunderstands the logic.

Samuel Adams has been releasing versions of Utopias every couple of years since the early 2000s, and with each release the alcohol content has increased. That escalation isn’t accidental. It’s the strategy. Making a beer so strong that it crosses legal thresholds isn’t a regulatory problem to be managed.

It’s the story.

Once the bottles sell out, which they reliably do, the effect lingers. People who will never taste the beer still carry the association. Samuel Adams makes a beer so extreme it’s banned in parts of the country! That idea lasts far longer than any campaign.

What counts here isn’t shock value. It’s which part of the product the brand chooses to push.

Beer is, at bottom, about alcohol. Sure, taste, craft, and ritual all play a role. But people buy beer because it does something to them. When Samuel Adams cranks the alcohol up, they’re not bolting on a gimmick. They’re leaning hard into the very reason beer exists.

That’s why this strategy works.

If the oddity were incidental, it would feel wrong. Imagine Samuel Adams releasing a beer bottle that dissolves after opening, or one with a label made of sandpaper, or a cap that requires special tools. Those might be memorable, but they’d be arbitrary. They wouldn’t deepen what beer is for. They’d pull attention away.

That difference shows up in plenty of other products as well.

Strong positioning pushes harder on the thing the product already does for people. Weak positioning adds drama somewhere else and hopes it sticks.

Once you see that, the pattern is easy to spot. With beer, you push alcohol. With coffee, alertness. With air conditioning, cold delivered fast. With a hotel, rest or silence. With consulting, resolution. With software, speed or focus. The principle is the same every time: exaggerate the reason the product exists, not the decoration around it.

Many companies push what’s easiest to dramatize rather than what actually defines them. They ask, “What will get attention?” instead of, “What is this business truly for?”

If you’re going to push something to the edge, push the reason the product exists. Do that, and even the people who opt out will understand what you stand for.