Matilda Bay’s award-winning Original Ale is a craft beer that had been in market for a year, but sales and retail distribution were low. With a limited budget, our brief was to create a campaign that would engage the public and trade with our beer-making credentials, ultimately driving sales, awareness and stockists.

It took the Matilda Bay brewers 27 batches to create a beer that met their master brewer’s standards. They called it Original Ale. To promote this perfect brew to craft beer drinkers (+35), we released the almost perfect rejects. Rejected Ales, the best beers you were never meant to taste.

With the Matilda Bay brewers, we re-brewed the rejected batches of beer so the public could taste the journey to perfection. From hop ratios to alcohol levels, product naming to packaging design, we created an entire range of new beers.

Designed with a deliberately stripped back, utilitarian approach and an R&D aesthetic; the beers, DM packs and brewer’s logbook appear as though made by brewers with pure function in mind straight from the brewery floor; demonstrating the brewery’s craft credentials.

With names like ‘Yeah…nah’, ‘Keep dreaming’ and ‘Ballpark’, each of the 27 cans tells a story of its rejection, brought to life in fridges, outdoor, press, film, radio and sample packs for journalists. Rejected and Original Ales were distributed in leading bottle stores nation-wide. Rejected Ales then won silver at major beer awards. Fitting, given Original Ale won gold.

A limited run of 5,500 Rejected Ales were produced.

Original Ale sales up 11x.

Stockists up 17%,

+14million media impressions in the first two weeks.

1 satisfied Master Brewer.