Matilda Bay had a problem. In the heavily saturated market of Australian craft beer, its attempts at making inroads with its Original Ale were coming up short. Not only was Original Ale a European Golden Ale – as opposed to the beer style du jour, pale ale – but it was also competing with over 600 other brands, most of which were commanding budgets far exceeding that of Matilda Bay’s. After 12 months of frustrating sales, the Yarra Valley brewery turned to Sydney-based agency Howatson+Company with a simple brief: develop a disruptive idea that would cut through the noise of the category, and get liquor retailers to notice Original Ale and feel compelled to stock it. All on a shoestring budget.

The resulting Rejected Ales campaign, which hinged on the story that it took many attempts to get the ale just right, was a huge success, winning a formidable nine Pencils (three of which were Yellow) at D&AD Awards 2022. Not only that, but sales of Matilda Bay’s Original Ale increased 11 times over, with a 17% boost in stockist distribution. We caught up with Gavin Chimes, the Executive Chief Director of Howatson+Company, to find out a little bit more about the campaign, and the thought processes behind it.

“Like all good ideas, ours was born from a chat over a beer,” explains Chimes. In this case, it started with the brewers themselves, who explained that it took 27 failed batches of beer to get one that was worthy of approval by master brewer Phil Sexton. Each iteration and each rejected ale would have been good enough for almost any other brewery, but not for Phil. So he shunned them one by one. “As soon as they told us about the 27 failed batches, we knew we had to release them,” says Chimes. “We also knew that the copy and branding surrounding each batch were going to play a vital role in the campaign. Both in the end were equally important, but our writing came first and led everything else. The names of the beers and the stories behind them were just more critical to selling the idea.”

With good copy in place, Howatson+Company was able to look towards the branding. Rejected Ales has a deliberately minimal, ‘Research & Development aesthetic’ – “as if the beers had come straight from the factory floor”, according to Chimes. But emblazoned on each can is a captivating tale of how that particular beer came into existence, and why it didn’t make the cut. Some of the copy reflected real events – for example when one brewer added a touch too many hops to a batch – but there was also a heavy sprinkling of poetic licence. Acts of God, carrot-averse donkeys, and singing taste buds all crop up amongst the lore.

“If it had been the other way around, and we considered the design first, I think the tone of our writing would have been more clinical and we’d have lost the irreverent charm that’s present throughout our copy,” explains Chimes.

For a radical and wide-ranging campaign such as this, it can be easy for the creative to lose sight of the original concept. But that wasn’t the case with Rejected Ales, explains Chimes. “There was a lot of back and forth with the client. From a writing point of view, we worked closely with their brewers to capture the details of their arduous journey to perfection. We opened old wounds and old brewing notes.” From the moment of those first beers together, all the way through each stage of the production process, Matilda Bay was as fastidious with the writing as it was with its ales. Any time the copy began to veer into far-fetched territory, “the brewers and marketers reigned us in,” says Chimes. “But it was always amicable and collaborative.”

So how do you bring a campaign like this to life, in a way that doesn’t muddy the original branding? Go minimal, of course. “We designed the Rejected Ales packaging with a deliberately stripped back, utilitarian approach,” says Chimes. “The rejected beers look like they’ve been haphazardly created by engineers or brewers with pure function in mind”. 

According to him, this pared-back, factory-fresh look is a world away from the eye-catching, maximal packaging of traditional craft beer upstarts. “Our stories of rejection offered something new to craft beer customers, giving them a refreshing glimpse behind the brewery curtain, showcasing the beer’s journey to perfection,” says Chimes. Once again, this was reflected in the copy, and those captivating tales of failure. “There was a consciousness to avoid the traps of category conventions. Every other craft beer praises their quality of ingredients, or tells stories of its provenance and so on. To cut through, we needed to be different”.