For American Craft Beer Week (which is this week, drink up), some 100 brewers teamed up to create one beer which happens to be an imperial porter using the same recipe. It’s crowdsourced much like Victors & Spoils’ work, see!
The can for that beer features the names of 4,490 craft breweries, representing all 50 states. It’s a nice show of unity from small brewers at a time when the macros seem to be circling like sharks to gobble up the more profitable craft breweries, what with their failing business models and all.
To promote the effort, the agency made a campaign video promoting the beer and the #MakeSmallBeerBig tag.
The can itself is a really cool concept, as is the beer in question. But the video is something of a disappointment.
Victors & Spoils took a fairly goofy route to promote the idea, which essentially boils down to 45 seconds of a stereotypical bearded beer guy (though, to be fair, there’s some truth to the cliche…) talking about how the beer is “the biggest 50 state collaboration since these United States,” being spun by one stage hand while the other blows fog. All of this is slowly revealed, of course, for comedic effect. It’s a familiar approach, somewhat reminiscent of Droga5’s work for Newcastle.
While we can understand wanting to take a more lighthearted approach, the ad doesn’t quite do justice to the idea it promotes.
The project was a creative way to celebrate small breweries via product, packaging and marketing. The advertising manages to express the idea behind the beer, but not in a way that adds anything substantial or grabs viewers’ attention. But feel free to disagree.
There are also a series of display ads, the best of which features the line, “The Official Craft Beer of Craft Beer.”
CREDITS
Client: CraftBeer.com
Agency: Victors & Spoils
Executive Creative Director: Sesh Moodley
Creative Director: Kate Kayne, Pat Horn
Associate Creative Director: Rob Lewis
Copywriter: Andrew Bridgers, Arthur Tanimoto
Art Director: Travis Brown
Account Director: Alexander Kayne
Agency Producer: Jenny Stefanov
Production Company: More Media
Director: The Dads
Editor: The Dads
Postproduction: Postmodern