SWEETWATER BREWING COMPANY
Guide Beer
Craft beer with a purpose.
Outdoor Guides take us places and show us things we’d never be able to experience on our own. Yet they have little monetary support during times of trouble such as injury or natural disaster. So in their honor, we partnered with Sweetwater to develop Guide Beer, a brand that would donate 11% of profits to guides in need.
We developed the name, brand identity, packaging design, creative campaign, and interactive experience.
Our challenge.
Sweetwater Brewery, a brand that has always been committed to outdoor living, wanted to find a way to give back to the Guides who have given their lives to help us enjoy the world around us.
Creating a new brand.
Sweetwater decided to launch their first lager to honor these stewards of the great outdoors. But they needed a new brand that was fully-dedicated to paying homage to Guides. So we helped them create Guide Beer. Our team developed the name, brand identity, packaging design, and creative content to launch this new beer, all laddering up to our campaign anthem: “For those that show us the way.”
The campaign celebrates guides by highlighting iconic places where adventurers seek the help of guides, including The Chattahoochee River, The Florida Keys, The Gauley River and Cape Hatteras. These locations are honored in the packaging design, can design, and print ads that include hand-drawn topographical maps. With a two-man production crew, we also captured video content of guides in these locations, to fuel the creation of long and short-form videos, as well as an in-depth interactive experience.
Website.
To further the campaign, we built an entire digital experience to tell each of the guides’ stories. Within the site, users could explore their bios and learn more about the wildlife and topography of their area through interactive tools.
It went on to win Best Innovation, Best UI Design and Best UX design from the CSS Design Awards and was featured as a FWA site of the day.
Interactive tap.
To ensure that guides benefited from every pour of the beer, we developed a custom Guide Beer tap. The tap itself was designed to replicate the look of a fly fishing rod and was fitted with technology to track every pull.
Topographic poster.
For trade magazines and publications, we hand-illustrated custom topographic maps in honor of each of the guides.
As of today, Sweetwater continues to give 11% to its Guide Beer Fund and are struggling to keep beers on the shelf.
Work Categories:
Branding, Custom Video & Photo Capture, Package Design, Social Content, Digital Video, Print Design, Website Design, Custom Illustration