In this creative and insightful episode of Epic Begins With 1 Step Forward, Zander Sprague sits down with T. Christian Helms, founder of Austin-based creative agency Helms Workshop, to explore the intersection of branding, curiosity, and innovation. Christian shares his winding path from journalism student to award-winning creative director, revealing how some of the best ideas emerge when you stop forcing them and allow curiosity to lead the way. Together, they discuss the psychology of branding, why people buy based on emotion rather than logic, and the importance of embracing mistakes as part of the creative process. Christian also shares the story behind the legendary 99-pack of beer that generated international media attention. This episode is packed with wisdom for entrepreneurs, creatives, and anyone looking to bring bold ideas to life.
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The 99-Pack Of Beer That Broke The Internet With T. Christian Helms
Intro To Creative Direction And Branding
In this episode, I have T. Christian Helms with me. Christian, tell us who you are and what you do.
I am a creative director and founder of an agency in Austin called Helms Workshop. I do everything from writing, creative direction, managing the team and taking out the trash sometimes. All of the above and all of the below.
That’s great. I’m interested to understand how you began this epic journey. You might have an epic story or two about some branding that you might have helped create some awareness and stuff. How did you get into branding marketing and stuff?
I went to school for journalism back in the early ’90 when you signed up for classes with a catalog and got on the phone.
I’m right there with you, Christian.
I grew up in a small town in the South in North Carolina. I didn’t know that branding was something you could do for a living, so I went to school for journalism. I was taking a ton of journalism classes and a ton of art classes and thinking, “If writing and art could somehow be combined, that would be ideal for me.” Towards the end of college, I managed to find a very obscure introductory course to graphic design. I was like, “This might be something.” I had to go to grad school to get good at it, but I was lucky to find it.
That’s awesome. It is funny somehow the path that we go down and then you go, “I like this. I never knew this existed.”
Some of my favorite people are folks who’ve had a winding path to find their sweet spot.
Some of the best people are folks who’ve had a winding path to find their sweet spot.
You and I are going to be good friends because I certainly have had a very windy road but super fun.
If you do it right, it should be fine.
Even when you do some of it wrong. Mistakes are part of the journey. You and I could both go, “That wasn’t a good choice to work for that company or take that job.”
It’s the best way to learn. Those are lessons you learned. You don’t learn nearly as much from successes as you do from just colossal calamity to write. It’s totally true. I wish it wasn’t, but it is definitely true.
That’s true just in, in general, in life. If we didn’t make mistakes, if stuff didn’t go right, we wouldn’t appreciate when it is going right because we assume that’s the way it always is. It’s what I call the Wall-E fallacy. It’s sunny and 72 degrees every single day.
Boring. You would get so used to that and it would become terribly boring without the ups and downs.
A little rain every now and then makes you appreciate the sun. If you like the rain, the sunny days then make you grumpy. You’re like, “It’s sunny again, or it’s raining.” This whole branding. You have to be pretty creative to like think, “Here’s this company. How am I going to help them do it?” I have known as an entrepreneur for the past decades. One of the things I say all the time is, “Branding and getting people brained awareness is one of the hardest things.” People will not buy what they don’t know exists. No matter how badly they need it.
They’ll spend more money on a more expensive product that they have some emotional or personal connection to you rather than just choosing on price. It’s absolutely true.
I spent a few years working at Intel many years ago. Being a psych major in history, I look at the intersection of things like, “What is the history of this in psychology and stuff?” From a branding perspective, Intel did so well back in the day. They got people to somehow understand and care about clock speed, how fast the processor worked. Now, it turned out that there was a ceiling to all of that, but people still knew that. People knew Intel. It was something like the third or fourth most recognized sound that when you heard it, you knew brand-wise. It’s huge. This is a company that makes computer processing units.
Which is like at least sexy thing you can try to market.
Although, it’s key to everything that we need to know about. We know about it in part because Intel brought it to everyone’s awareness. Now, when you see phones being advertised, they’re telling you what processors is in there.
That’s what’s fun about this job. You get to dig in, research, interview and just scour the earth for information and start to surface these little insights on what makes a company or a product special or unique or compelling. It might be a key feature. It might be the brand personality and culture. It might be X, Y, or Z. It can be a million things. It can be a weird quirk that they might even think is a negative but we can leverage into a positive. It’s about figuring out those things that make them different and then amplifying that so people listen.
You have some newish company or some new product you’ve been hired. How do you come up with the idea for what picture you’re going to have or what logo they might need you. You’re maybe like, “Your logo was not working. We got to redo that.”
The Iterative Branding Process: From Strategy To Identity
It’s an iterative process that starts with intensive strategy, then goes into a visual strategy that goes into exploring identity. It’s building layers and you bring the client partner on that journey with you. You don’t hide your work. You make them part of that process. By the time you get to the logo’s and those things, you have a shared vision for where it’s going to go. I have a friend who’s a research scientist. We were having a beer and he said, “I don’t know how you do what you do because you guys have to reinvent the wheel every single day.”
I was like, “I love what I do because I have to reinvent the wheel every single day. It’s got to be different every time.” For a young creative, you want to listen as little as possible, design something that you love and then try to convince the client to love it. That’s the young creative model. By the time you get to be an old guy like me, the best part is not knowing what the answer is, and finding it together. It’s surprising you because it’s not something you could have imagined at the beginning of the project. Those are the best.
I know as an entrepreneur, I’ve written books and I’m like, “I need a book cover.” There’s some great places where I can pick graphic designers and book designers against each other, contests and stuff. I’ve had logos made where I’m like, “I don’t know what I want.” Here’s what this is, but I’m not quite sure. I’ll know it when I see it.
This isn’t to give you what you want. It’s to give you what you need to get where you want to go. If you know what you want, then you could have done it. You don’t need us if you know what you want.
This isn’t to give you what you want. It’s to give you what you need to get where you want to go.
I could just hire one person. Not run a contest and go, “Christian, here’s exactly what I want. Can you just put it all together for me?” I have to say that on the client side, it’s super fun to go, “What are people coming up with? That’s not what I was thinking. That’s getting closer. I like that. I hadn’t thought of doing it that way.” It’s like my book cover Epic Begins. When I saw it, I’m like, “That’s what I want.” People had all different ideas of what the book cover would look like.
There’s so much strategy and thought that goes into that work. When you respond to it, you don’t respond to it intellectually. You respond to it with your gut and your heart. It’s that moment when gut and heart override head and you’re like, “I love this thing. I want to know more.” That’s what we work to build.
From a psychological standpoint, that decision is made in like micro seconds. Honestly, you look at a whole bunch of things and then you’re like, “I like that one.” Maybe it needs a little tweaking. You’re like, “That’s good. That’s close, but take that out or make this bolder.” Whatever. That whole decision is so quick and you’re not even consciously aware. It’s just your brain goes, “That’s the one.”
Balancing Perfection And The “Soul” Of Creative Work
Sometimes, you can tweak and refine so much that the thing loses the soul it had in the beginning. Slight imperfections, slight curiosities are the things you fall in love with. If you think about it like a white stripes song, it’s the feedback before the guitar riff that you just love. It makes you fall into this relationship with this song. It’s an interesting thing to balance perfection and imperfection and to know where that sweet spot is sometimes.
As a presenter and stuff like that, some of the keynote lines. Those things that come out that have a lot of stickiness that people are like, “I like that.” It doesn’t happen because I’m so creative and stuff. It’s just that there are a lot of words that pour out on my pie hole. Occasionally, I put a group of them together that resonate and like, “I’m going to hold on to that one.”
It’s fun when you surprise yourself.
Sometimes, you can tweak and refine so much that the thing loses the soul it had in the beginning.
I always laughed that even though I’m on all the social media and I’m trying to create stuff. The things people might like aren’t the ones that get lots of responses. The things that I throw up there, are the ones that get the most views or whatever. I’m sure that in your line of work, there’s things where you think, “This is going to be great. This is a great tagline,” and it works. The thing that you were up against the wall and I don’t want to say you just threw it together. You’re just like, “What about this?” It’s the line you think the client won’t pick and they’re like, “That’s great. It’s brilliant.”
We’re working on like three different naming exercises for brands. It’s tough for the younger creatives who haven’t built up that muscle yet because they sit down. They stare at the page and they go, “What’s the name?” That’s great. I can generate 30, 50, or 75 names pretty quickly. Often the ones that end up being the best or ones that come to you when you’re making dinner or you’re on a bike ride with your kid. They come out of the heavens and land on your head. It’s horribly unfair because you’re not putting in the work but you’ve essentially taken all the fuel for that work and internalized it. You let your brain work on it in the background. Sometimes that happens.
I was honestly talking about it. I’ve been talking about this lately a lot because I’m like, “Look at this.” Most of us are using 10% of our brain, as they say. Geniuses are using 12% to 15%, but I certainly would put myself in the 10%. That means 90% of this beautiful organ is taking in millions of pieces of information every moment of the day. Maybe some of that. brilliance seeps into the front 10% where I become conscious.
Some of the stuff you’re thinking so hard on it and then when you go and you’re living your life. You’re washing the dishes, as you said. All of a sudden, that 90% of your brains like, “Hold on. I’ll work on that in the background for you,” and goes, “What about this?” It pushes it forward. That does happen. There’s times where I’ve had ideas. There’s a thing I’m doing. Life is better with those adjectives because I’m a positive person. I think adjectives are so important in our life.
They amplify what’s going on. I just had this idea while I was walking and I’m like, “Life is better with those adjectives. We need to use more adjectives.” I’m going to just put this little series together and put it up on TikTok and YouTube and stuff. That’s just little one-minute things in their adjectives. I have a whole little explanation. I seemed to like it. It’s only because I wasn’t actively thinking about it. I just said, “Life is better with adjectives. Wow. That’s cool. I like that. Let me run with it.”
The cool thing is that you can also essentially trick your brain into getting into that space with lateral thinking. Linear thinking is, A leads to B leads to C. Linear thinking is A leads to baseball, it leads to cantaloupe. It puts you in a different frame of mind and has you exploring a different space that you didn’t necessarily expect. That often generates unique. Not all ideas.
I’m interested if you’d share some of the moments a-ha moments that you’ve had with the clients be at a tagline, a logo, a visual or something.
Creative Case Study: The Viral Austin Beer Works 99-Pack
The pinnacle for me has to be some of the work I did years ago with a brewery called Austin Beerworks here in Austin. I’ll skip to the probably the most ridiculous example of that. They had an issue with one of their beers that they thought was going to be their best seller. It was called the Peacemaker. It was what they called an extra pale ale. It did not do so well, and it’s because consumers were confused. Whether that meant it was a light drinkable beer or a hardcore pale ale like extra pale.
Folks didn’t know what to do with it. They asked us to essentially rebrand the beer. We switched the name to Anytime Ale so that people would. It’s a light beer you can drink anytime. He wanted to use that beer to launch their first multi-pack of beer in retail. That linear thinking leads us to, “If we’re doing a multi-pack, what multi-pack does an anytime ale deserve?” If you can drink at any time, you should probably have a lot of them around.
We went with the list of 500 Anytimes from waiting on the postman to calling in sick to whatever. All these opportunities to enjoy beer. We landed on a 99 pack of beer. This thing was seven and a half feet tall and weighed a zillion pounds. It was taller than Shaq. It made international news for this little brewery. It was on CNN, the Today Show, Good Morning, America, Comedy Central, press in Germany, and press all over the world and was on the front page of Reddit for a week. We put this giant thing that was completely impractical out into the world.
Linear thinking puts you in a box, whereas lateral thinking has you exploring a different space that you didn’t necessarily expect.
No one could ever go to the store and pick up a 99 pack of beer.
They did. People were following the delivery trucks trying to get them because we only did a select number of them. This live tweet frenzy of folks like, “I saw the delivery truck here. I think they’re delivering one to South HEB.” It became this massive thing. It’s allowing yourself to be a little silly and a little linear and then taking the joke you make over beers, and then making it a real thing. People love that.
That’s a great story.
It was a funny one.
I’ll say, I’m creative. I’m always like, “What about this?” Again, I’m sure you’ve experienced this. You don’t know, so you just put stuff out and say, “How is it going to do?” If you throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. Oftentimes, you just don’t know.
The creative process is different from the strategic process. Once you get into early creative, it’s about exploration and you said it perfectly. What if? What if it’s this? What if it’s that? That curiosity allows space for things to show up. Once you generate a bunch of ideas you put on your editor hat and your strategic hat. You evaluate those ideas to see which one is the strongest and the most appropriate. You can’t be the editor and the creator at the same time or you’re just stopping yourself cold before you even get started.
Curiosity is the best and kids are probably the best reminder of that. They are the kings of lateral thinking rather than linear thinking. It’s inspiring.
There are some processes. I certainly know this in trying to create stuff. I’m like, “I got a sit down. I want to create this thing.” It’s just that. That process isn’t going to work now. I need to walk away from my desk. I need to think about it differently. I found that the voice memo thing on my cell phone is key because there are times where you jump. The light bulb goes off. You have that moment and you’re like, “I need to record it.” I have to say, being older, sometimes I’m awake at 4:00 in the morning and there’s some creative thoughts. Some of them are gone because I didn’t get them. I’m like, “I’m going to remember that.”
That’s the worst.
People go, “Have a piece of paper.” I’m like, “It’s dark.” I’m trying not to be awake. I don’t want to turn a light on. My partner will be upset if I turn on the light people and go, “Hold on. I have this brilliant idea.” People go, “What about your phone?” I turn my phone off and at night because I’m a Gen X or I’m like, I don’t need my phone lighting up and buzzing and doing all the things while I’m sleeping.
The same. As I said, I’ve gotten good at rolling over in the middle and writing on a pad without looking at it and being able to get it enough on the page that I can try to decipher it the next morning. Sometimes, it makes no sense but sometimes it does.
Hairy foot slipper. I have no idea what that is but okay.
It’s brilliant at the moment.
You’re like, “I’m going to win the universal creative award. Look at this.” That’s the whole creative process. You said something that’s important for whatever epic journey you’re on. Be curious. As adults, we lose our curiosity. I look at toddlers and they’re pointing, going, “Look.” I try to remain curious because when I get curious that’s when the fun stuff starts to happen. As you said, what if. Maybe you take a what if idea and take it for a bit of a ride a little. A strategic thinking and go, “Although, that is fun. I’m not going to do that.”
Curiosity is the best and kids are the probably the best reminder of that. They are the kings of lateral thinking rather than linear thinking. It’s inspiring. It really is.
Understanding Parallel Vs. Serial Thinking In Business
From my time at Intel where I spent a lot of time trying to help universities change their computer science to teach parallel programming versus serial programming. Which was and is a non-trivial thing to ask people to do. For those who don’t know, parallel programming means all the computers that we have today, even in our cell phones, have multiple CPUs. It’s the brain. The computer I have had seven of these but not that long ago, all computer programs are written as I call serial, which is a straight line.
It reads that line of code and says, “Execute,” and the next one asks to wait until that first one. B asked to wait for A. C had to wait for B. The way I like to explain to people is, if you think of a little bodega and it has one checkout line. It doesn’t matter whether you have one item or fifteen. A person with fifteen people has to wait for that one item to check out. Now, the bodega expands and now it adds four checkout lines.
Four lines of people can go through and they can get processed faster. We all talk about multitasking. It’s been my experience as a psychologist that we are all single core minds in a multi-core world. Meaning we cannot effectively multitask. I am not able to write an email with my left hand and write a book with my right hand. I cannot do it.
I can do things simultaneously but I don’t tend to do a lot of them very well. There are some things we can multitask at like drive and talk to someone in the car. Drive and listen to the radio. We can multi-task. You talk about kids. Kids are like parallel programming. They’re like, “I could take all these different inputs.” As we get older, somehow that ability goes away.
Part of it is that curiosity. The other part is just accumulation of information. We’re processing so much all the time, especially these days. It can gunk up the works. We’re defragging your mental hard drive and simplifying things. I agree 100%.
Embracing ‘Not Yet’: Goals, Growth, And Closing Thoughts
One of the things I love to ask my guests, in my book, I have this concept of not yet. To me, not yet is so powerful because there are those things that we’d like to do but not yet. Sometimes, we’re working on them and we just haven’t gotten to it. Others are like, “Someday, I’d like to,” but we keep open the possibility that we can do it. For you, Christian, what’s one or two of your not yets? Be it professional or personal.
There’s a zillion. I wish I could live a couple of lives in a road to get to everything I’m curious about but it doesn’t work that way. I want to design a house with my wife someday rather than buying a house that exists. I’m going to have to be retired to do that because to do it well takes so much staying on top of things.
That’s great not yet, but I’d like to design my own house. That’s awesome.
That’s a biggie. Another was to write a book, which I’m in the process of now and you know how that goes.
I do, and that’s a big not yet. You tell people, “I’m coming up with a book,” and people are like, “Has it come out?” Not yet.
The worst that you can do is tell someone you’re working on a book, which I just did.
People who don’t get it. Writing the book is a challenge and the editing process. I can tell you that I have written three books. I’m working on my fourth book. That’s the part that is the wild card. You do not know. You could say, four weeks for editing and proof reading and stuff. The other thing I’ll tell you, Christian, when you get to it.
By the time your book comes out you probably don’t want to open up your book for about three months because you’ve just read your whole entire book six or seven times back-to-back. I love my books but I can tell you all three of them that I’ve written so far. When they came out, I was talking about it but I cannot open that book again.
I have a friend who’s a New York Times bestselling novel. He writes these brilliant Southern novels. At the beginning, he’s so excited. We’re taking a walk through Oxford, Mississippi and he’s telling me the whole story. He’s so fired up that it’s going to be great. By the time it’s done, he’s like, “I don’t know if it’s good. I don’t know. I think it’s good. I can’t.” For those guys, it’s years of process with publishers and everything.
The worst that you can do is tell someone you’re working on a book.
More importantly, think about any book. If you read the whole thing then you’re like, “Next week, I’m going to go read this book again,” and it’s your own words. You’re like, “I love me but oh no.” I just tell people, that’s the thing they don’t tell you. It’s not that you don’t like your book but like anything, if you watched the same movie seven times in a row. You’d be like, “I don’t want to see that movie. I love it, but I don’t need to see it again. I just watched it repeatedly.”
The proofreading, good enough. That’s what I’m going to tell you. My word of advice is good enough because you want to try and catch everything. There will be a period or a comma or something that you all missed. I had one of my books and they were missed and they were professional proofreaders. I had so many eyes on this and we all missed it. Why? It’s because we were so familiar with what it said.
Your brain’s finishing that sentence for you versus you reading it.
Absolutely. I know what I’m saying. After it came out, a friend of mine is like, “By the way, did you know?” I looked and I’m like, “How do we all mess up?” From a psychological standpoint, I get it. We all know we filled in the, the. Anyway, I want to thank you so much. How can people find you and your work if they are like, “I need a creative?”
Visit us at HelmsWorkshop.com. Hit me up on LinkedIn, where I’m very active. Check out the agency on Instagram. You can check me out on Instagram as well where I’m very lazy, but I’m very active on LinkedIn. I’ve chosen that as the avenue.
Thank you so much for coming on. What a great conversation.
Thanks. I enjoyed it.
No problem. I want to remind everyone that if you’re ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. Remember, epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
- T. Christian Helms
- T. Christian Helms on LinkedIn
- T. Christian Helms on Instagram
- Helms Workshop
- Helms Workshop on Instagram
- EPIC Begins With 1 Step Forward: How To Plan, Achieve, and Enjoy The Journey
- Austin Beerworks
About T. Christian Helms
I’ve spent my career helping brands find their voice, shape their story, and step into who they really are.
As Founder and Creative Director of Helms Workshop, I’ve partnered with everything from household names (Jack Daniel’s, Southwest Airlines) to cult-favorite startups (Austin Beerworks, Howler Bros) to build brands that don’t just sell—they mean something.
But several years ago, life blindsided me. I was hit with Lyme disease and Ehrlichiosis—undiagnosed for over a year. I went from leading a thriving agency to struggling to walk across a room. Healing was long, weird, and wildly unconventional. But through it, I had an epiphany: the same tools I use to build brands—clarity, storytelling, design, purpose—could help me rebuild my life.
Since then, I’ve spoken across the country, sharing insights on creative identity, lateral thinking, personal branding, and how to find wonder in the chaos.