For the Brewers Association, there was no better way to champion craft beer than by taking on big beer. BA knew it couldn’t outspend the big guys, but it could rally an entire community to do something the big guys never could.

We got every registered craft brewery in the country to come together to create a single beer, and put all 4,490 of their names on the can. We teased the massive merger on social, by leveraging the accounts of thousands of different breweries. We launched The Biggest Small Beer Ever Made just before American Craft Beer Week, with a video that poked fun at Big Beer conventions. Then raised a glass to the effort through a synchronized nationwide toast.

It was the biggest collaboration in the history of craft beer. And an unprecedented show of solidarity in a segmented market. Most importantly, it drove attendance to ACBW events.

BA leveraged its network of breweries to establish a huge team to collaborate on the beer. From agreeing on the recipe, to brewing the batches, to product design of the can, 4,490 breweries across the USA worked in unity.

With the beer ready to go, BA distributed a social toolkit to participating breweries, encouraging them to post content and drive awareness of the beer and event. In the participating brewpubs and tap houses they displayed posters promoting the ‘The Biggest Small Beer Ever Made’ as well as a PR push to journalists to encourage their readers to try the beer during ACBW. And all the brewers celebrated the beer with a coordinated social toast.

The full campaign including social, video, PR and POS ran for 4 weeks leading up to ACBW and during the event. Without a media budget, BA used owned and earned channels to garner 166 million impressions.

With a budget of only $12,000, the campaign generated 166 million PR impressions, with 130+ media placements across the USA.

Following the launch, awareness for American Craft Beer Week reached an all time high.

The campaign garnered 65.2 million Twitter impressions.

Website traffic for the Brewers Association and American Craft Beer Week increased by over 82% compared to 2015.

We united every registered American craft beer brewery, all 4,490 of them, in a never before done collaboration to create a single beer that represents all American craft brewers.

Ultimately, we took back what it means to be an American beer from the big, global beer companies and gave it back to the men and women of the independent craft beer movement and their passionate consumers.