A video message for Maine Beer Night
An email from Maine Brewers’ Guild director Sean Sullivan piqued our interest: An invitation to a virtual party which included t-shirts, stickers and Maine craft beer. We love making labels for our craft beer customers. Did we want to join the party? Yes we did. Our sales team dove in and joined our marketing team/family to pack a summer of fun into a 30-second message.
We fantasized about an epic beer tower showing all of our Maine customers’ labels. We’d need about 100 cans stacked 8-stories high… we didn’t let the practicalities daunt us during the brainstorming phase. We dreamed about someone catching a can on a water slide, landing with a splash, erupting from the water triumphantly, cracking open the beer and enjoying that summer sip… then plunking the can down with a flourish. Why not? We were brainstorming.
In the days of encouraged hibernation, face masks and social distancing, could we capture the spirit the Maine Brewers were conjuring up with Maine Beer Night? What if one of our cool sales reps went to a beer store and came out with a bag of Maine beers? Deposited the bag in his car. And then, instead of the reality of heading home for a quiet night, the fantasy of splashes, slides and towers begins?
That is the back story of this 30-second message.
Sit back and watch our little story… but stay alert—it’s a quick one! Cheers.
Credits
Our thanks to Hillary Sterling and Peter Cameron who happen to be in NH escaping the Hollywood hills during this most unusual year. This duo creates short films vocationally so we put their talents to good use. Pete had built a beer can tower in his youth and Hillary had filmed a friend catching a beer on a pool slide. Those memories formed the basis of our fantasy. Hillary appears pouring the Maine Beer and Pete closes this spot placing the top on the tower.
Thanks also to Shane Beaton, our shopper in the video. Amherst Label’s newest account exec was willing to do whatever the casting director asked.
Nicholas Kepka Calvetti catches the beer so effortlessly from his dad Nick Calvetti that one might suspect they have done this trick before.
When scouting locations, we didn’t have to go far—thank you to Nick and Nye and Angela Hornor for letting us get creative in their yards.
Out-takes
Some of the footage we shot at Amherst Label was left on the cutting room floor. Thirty seconds is not very long! So some sweet shots of sales coordinators Andrea Smith and Jessica Ackerman don’t appear in the final cut. And photogenic Scott and Ken were also cut. Here are some of the outtakes–no bloopers. Just footage that didn’t fit.
Pre-production
Our tower required 100 beer cans from our customers in the neighboring state of Maine. We found some of the brews we needed at two local beer shops but we will admit that we got clever representing 14 of our Maine brewery customers. We had the labels… we needed the cans. And we needed them in 16 hours. We’ll keep our secrets close to our vest but suffice it to say our phenom marketing assistant Skylar Curtis (pictured) pulled a rabbit of her hat 93 times.
