As we close out 2017, we wanted to look back at all the best marketing ideas of the year – the inventive campaigns, the coolest giveaways, the best events and most inspiring puns. Many of which you can find throughout the year in our poorly named Craft Beer Marketing Idea of the Week series.
Heavy Seas, MadTree locally sourced collab raises money for Clean Water Fund
This beer is part of Heavy Seas’ Partner Ships series, which is a pun so great it should have been featured in this gimmick of ours long ago, and features beers produced in collaboration with other regionally and nationally recognized brewers in the spirit of friendship, creativity and adventure. For 2017, Heavy Seas is partnered with Union Craft Brewing and Cigar City Brewing in addition to MadTree. The Partner Ships series is brewed at Heavy Seas Beer in Baltimore. The coolness of this MadTree beer starts with locally sourced ingredients from partners in both communities. Chesapeake Bay Roasting Co. from Baltimore worked with Cincinnati’s Deeper Roots Coffee to select and roast two different coffees to use in the beer.
Crying Eagle collab with restaurant app
The idea, like all great ideas, first starts with a new beer: Crying Eagle Brewing Co.’s A Nice Pear. The Louisiana brewery came up with it special for a partnership it formed with Waitr, a restaurant on-demand platform that connects local restaurants to hungry consumers. Today, Waitr has more than 2,500 restaurant partners and hundreds of thousands of users in more than 100 cities. And now, it has this specialty beer to offer that will now be available in the restaurants it is working with. You follow that?
Blind taste testings for chefs at Dust Bowl Brewing
After months of collaboration, the northern California brewery teamed with SupHerb Farms, a nearby supplier of fresh tasting IQF ingredient solutions for foodservice operators and food manufacturers, to host chefs for a day of beer and food pairings along with behind-the-scenes tours of each manufacturing facility. Taste and flavor have always been essential features of beer, but now more than ever these components are being assessed against a new, colorful canvas of food. What made the event especially unique was keynote speaker, Dr. Hoby Wedler, a renowned pioneer in sensory tasting and co-founder of Senspoint Design. Blind since birth, Wedler teamed with brewmaster Don Oliver, taproom chef Abel Larios and SupHerb Farms chef Scott Adair to create four innovative pairings featuring ingredients from SupHerb Farms and signature beers from Dust Bowl Brewing Co.
2SP Brewing revives forgotten lettering in new series
Call us book nerds if you must (and you should), but we think this is cool: The brewery is partnering with Post Typography, a Baltimore-based creative studio, for a collaboration series of limited 16-ounce cans that will feature forgotten lettering, like 17th Century Italian calligraphy, and unappreciated lager styles, including pilsners and dunkels.
Rogue Ales’ Dog Days of Summer event
Dog Days is the incarnation of what was once known as Brewer’s Memorial Ale Fest, an event dedicated to Rogue Brewmaster John Maier’s late dog, Brewer. This pooch party will feature many of the same well-loved elements including dog-inspired tomfoolery, live music, tasty treats and “a strictly Oregon Coast microbrew lineup,” says the press release. What can you expect?
Cincinnati breweries to punch each other
So, we wrote about this the first year it happened, and we will likely tout it every other year it takes place: Fifty West Brewing Co. has released the details for Punch Out: Round 2, an event in which Fifty West Brewing company hosts legit boxing matches between area brewers at its Production Works facility. This year, the local brewing company promises to not only bring back the one-of-a-kind festival, but to turn things up a notch.
The Miller Lite vs. Bud Light taste challenge, this summer’s blandest competition
Just kidding.
Bock Fest and Goat Race
Sly Fox Brewing has been around since 1995 and is never one to stick with what everyone else is doing. For example, it was ahead of the game with canning as the first craft brewery in the mid-Atlantic to put in a canning line in 2006 (eventually earning the first-ever Great American Beer Festival medal awarded to a canned craft beer in 2007). The brewery has earned GABF medals virtually every year since, and is widely recognized as among the region’s best and most enduring craft breweries.
What else, what else … oh yeah, they also host an annual goat race.
Alaskan Brewing asks customers to rate beers in limited release series to inform future decisions
Consumer reviews are a big part of all transactions today, but they’ve been integral to the craft beer experience basically from the beginning. And since craft breweries are constantly experimenting and coming up with new recipes, the cycle of consumer reviews never stops being integral. Alaskan Brewing is taking this relationship one step further with its Taste of Alaska Sampler Pack this spring or summer. This program provides:
- The opportunity to try smaller batch brews that have previously had limited or no distribution outside of Alaska;
- A prompt to send direct feedback on the styles at this url.
Dogfish Head is hitting the road with a mobile record store
We say it all of the time — beer and music are inseparable friends. There’s a million examples, but this latest partnership between Dogfish Head Brewery and Crosley Radio, a leading audio brand that’s been around since the 1920s, might be the coolest one yet. The year-long mission for Louisville-based Crosley and Milton-based Dogfish Head includes a 29-city mobile record store tour leading up to the 10th annual Record Store Day on Sat., April 22. The Dogfish Head x Crosley Cruiser journey begins in Louisville, Ky., on Friday, March 3, and ends in Philadelphia on April 22.
Huge light up sign atop City Lights Brewing
We have a lot of words on this site dedicated to the importance of marketing and branding. Going through that process can be tough work — what is this brand? How do we convey that in a logo? All the answers aren’t complicated though. Often the home run idea is something simple. We present you one such simple home run.
Brooklyn Brewery tells us about its Beer Mansion, 2017 promotional tour
For the fifth year running, Brooklyn Brewery is revving up its Brooklyn Brewery Mash tour and this year is bringing it home to Brooklyn for the first time ever this April. Oh, and the big draw is something called Beer Mansion. “Now in our fifth year, the Mash tour is taking the form of a two-day kaleidoscopic beer extravaganza called Beer Mansion. Beer Mansion is a crazy multidisciplinary dive into the beauty of the craft beer community. Our goal has always been to highlight urban communities through local collaborations and unique, authentic programming. This year is no different, but we decided to throw all of these elements into one funky space and let them all simmer together under one roof.”
Summit Brewing partners with Adult Hockey Association (check out this homemade Zamboni)
Craft Credo No. 2: Serve your community first. Craft Credo No. 4: Embrace philanthropy. Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul, Minn., is embracing both of those hokey, heartwarming, CBB-createdcraft philosophies in its latest business move — and at the same time creating a clever way to market its products to outdoor-oriented sports lovers (who are often known to drink some beers). The brewery recently announced a partnership with the Adult Hockey Association (AHA), a Minnesota-based amateur adult hockey association for men and women. Since 2001, the AHA has been fostering “safe, fun competition for adults who want to play no-check, you-can-still-go-to-work-Monday hockey.”
Boss Move: Wyoming’s Melvin Brewing secures Hacksaw Jim Duggan as its 2×4 Day spokesperson
My only regret for 2016? That I didn’t write in my vote for “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan this past November. Sorry Hillary. Sorry Donny. Just watch the video above, and you’ll quickly understand why there’s no leader more qualified to lead America. In fact, I submit that WWE Hall of Fame wrestler Jim Duggan is one of this country’s most charismatic patriots — usually fisting an American flag in his right hand and his signature two-by-four in his left. Somehow, Wyoming’s Melvin Brewing Co. has convinced him to hold a 2×4 IPA, which we will accept as a fairly good substitute for either or both.
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