Challenge

BOLTGROUP partnered with our local Charlotte AIGA chapter to put on an event called Beer & Branding in 2017. (AIGA stands for the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and is the professional association for design). BOLTGROUP helped AIGA Charlotte to brand, promote, and organize this unique two-part event. The target of the event is both beer lovers and design admirers. Fortunately, there is a substantial overlap in these audiences!

Solution

In its fourth year, the premise of Beer & Branding is for designers to work with local home brewers to ideate, brew, and design a branding package based on a secret brewing ingredient that is announced by our brewing host, NoDa Brewery. The secret ingredient in 2017 was chocolate. At the first part, the Kickoff Event, designers are paired with home brewers so that they can meet and start the collaboration. At the finale, about two months later, which is the Beer & Branding Showcase, everyone comes together to see the combined efforts and creativity of the local designers and local home brewers in a Showcase that features the branding packages, as well as beer samples of the home brewed beers.

At the Showcase, every attendee has the opportunity to vote for their favorite branding packages, with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place “Crowd Favorites” being announced. While beers are judged by a select panel of beer experts before the Showcase, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place beers will be announced at the event, with the 1st place beer also released as part of the NoDa Brewing Company’s popular Nodable Series.

Knowing this would event would be repeated annually, BOLTGROUP set up a framework and umbrella as an overlay for future events. Scheduling, venue setup, design elements, rules and winners, and judging process were some of the tasks built into the overall structure. However, each year’s event will also be uniquely its own.

Event elements included preliminary strategy and planning meetings, event kickoff, and ultimately, the brewing competition and design showcase event where attendees select their favorite branding packages. Some main event components were signage, gallery display boards, brewer station setup, and a custom-made bottle-cap-ballot voting station. We also custom-made trophies mimicking the branding—a beer tap trophy for the first place brewer, and a pencil trophy for the first place designer.

Result

In 2017, the event’s fourth consecutive year, the Beer & Branding Showcase was an outstanding success! We pulled in the largest crowd to date, and attendees were blown away by the talents that both the beer and the design community brought to the table. According to everyone involved, this event just keeps getting better and better.