Georgetown Craft Beer Festival
Head for the Hills is a day of craft beer & cider sampling, gourmet food, and live music in the beautiful countryside of Georgetown, a community situated outside Toronto, Canada. Recently voted the #1 beer festival in Ontario, Head for the Hills is a guaranteed good time rain or shine.
Industry
— Media & entertainment
— Not-for-profit
— Beverage alcohol
Branding to
— Become known
— Articulate value
Services
— Brand naming
— Brand identity & visual systems
— Advertising & promotion
— Website design & development
The Situation
Head for the Hills is a day of craft beer & cider sampling, gourmet food, and live music in the beautiful countryside of Georgetown, a community situated outside Toronto, Canada. Recently voted the #1 beer festival in Ontario, Head for the Hills is a guaranteed good time rain or shine.
Human catalyst
Craft beer drinkers had access only to hip urban festivals in the summer when darker more full-bodied beers are enjoyed more in the cooler months.
Our Solution
Our brand strategy was to leverage two distinguishing attributes: we were the only beer festival in the country that took place in the Fall. Both of these aspects provided rich creative territory to build the brand upon, starting with the name: Head for the Hills. In the first and second year of the event our creative focus was to establish our difference through our location which paid off the name. This allowed us to talk about the colourful characters one would come across at our festival through a distinctive cartoon diorama-style creative platform. This included website, digital marketing, ticket design, sponsorship package, radio and Out-of-Home advertising. In the third year, we focused the creative on the social aspect of the event and sharing good times with friends through their favourite brews using a distinctive photographic graphic treatment that brought all the “cheers” to the forefront of the images.
In 2019, we wanted to get more people to buy tickets early, so we focused the campaign on urgency, with the headline; “Don’t Miss Out” juxtaposed against a sad or crying face of someone who didn’t buy their tickets in time and missed out.
The Yield
Today the festival has been voted the number #1 craft beer festival in the Toronto area. In 2019 we attracted over 5,000 visitors, including 108 VIP visitors at a higher price point which combined, raised over $110,000 shared among the four service organization the festival supports.
