A brewery was built in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1927, operating as the Hub City Brewing Company. In 1989 they were told Carling and Molson would merge. This merger would mean the end of the brewery in Saskatoon and the loss of jobs for its 40 employees.
A group of determined and bold employees stood up and pooled their resources. The Original 16 risked it all and founded The Great Western Brewing Company. The brewery was David in a world full of Goliaths. But, with the support of their families, the Original 16 made it through each and every challenge thrown at them.
Now, The Great Western Brewing Company is one of Canada’s most successful regional brewers and an internationally recognized producer of world-class beer.
Over the course of 3 years, I helped design, launch and promote numerous varietals of beer within the Great Western Brewery group.
Under the Original 16 brand, we re-designed all packaging for Canadian Pale Ale, Canadian Copper Ale, Prairie White, Canadian Extra Light, O16 Zero and O16 Ultra.
These were all initially distributed across Western Canada in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba.
We pushed out the campaign ‘CELEBRATE THINGS DONE WELL’ to tie in with the overall concept that no matter how big or small your daily tasks are it’s always worth celebrating the win. An example of this is the TV Commercial below we did that shows a guy constructing a BBQ and celebrating the build. It’s a big win for him in his own world.
We managed to scoop a fantastic sponsorship deal with National Hockey League (NHL) team, The Calgary Flames.
A whole host of placements were generated including:
• In-stadium branding at bars/concessions.
• Full VIP Original 16 Lounge design with branding.
• 15 and 30 sec TV commercials.
• Full social media campaign.
• Brand awareness on Stadium Jumbotron.
• Brand awareness on hockey rink boards broadcast nationally.
• Limited Can design & Packaging.
• POS Placements & Promotional giveaways.
• NHL website takeover.
As well as Original 16, Great Western Brewery also manufactured other beers such as Great Western Lager. These were heroes in their own right!
Various campaigns were rolled out across TV, POS and Social Media.
As an example, GW Lager was the most popular varietal within the Great Western Lager family. We drew from unique angle the ingredients were locally sourced and that was something GWB are proud of. We chose the angle ‘FROM FARM TO FUN’. Below is an example of a 15 sec TV commercial we produced:
Social posts can always be hit and miss until you find the right balance. We convinced the client to move away from their stale social posts that were being generated once a week in-house to letting our agency take a better hold of how the social channels should be performing. A dedicated team was set up to deliver more consistent and, of course, more frequent posts.
