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, we released the almost perfect rejects. Rejected Ales, the best beers you were never meant to taste.

In a market saturated with colourful craft beer branding, it was important that the packaging design of the Rejected Ales stood out and had appeal. But we were also mindful that it couldn’t compete with the Original Ale brand - the very beer we were promoting.

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

Each can was given a batch number and a name that referenced how close to perfection each beer was, like ‘Keep Dreaming’ or ‘Ballpark’. On the back of each we emblazoned stories of the beer’s delicious rejection, created in collaboration with the brewing team.

Matilda Bay is BCorp certified, so all materials were sustainable and recyclable, sourced from environmentally friendly means.

Original Ale sales up 11x.

Stockists up 17%,

+14million media impressions in the first two weeks.

1 satisfied Master Brewer.