Blue Moon wanted to be a leader in the craft beer market. Owned by Coors, the marketing team decided they would market this beer differently. The idea was to market this beer in a more upscale way — the way wines are. We would emphasize tasting notes, garnishing the beer, and introduce food pairings. It wasn’t long after that the concept of Artfully Crafted was born. Instead of the typical beer “hero” photography — we would feature a painting of the product.

I was the lead designer for the launch of Blue Moon’s award-winning Artfully Crafted campaign. For the initial campaign, we commissioned Shelly Bartek to paint a variety of scenes featuring Blue Moon — always garnished with an orange. I digitally illustrated the frames, and enhanced the dimensionality in the paintings so they would stand out when printed. Using photoshop brushes, I created pricing areas that appeared as if they were painted on. These pricing areas can be printed over for use in grocery, liquor store, bar, and convenience store marketing.

In the second year of the campaign, the concept was for the pricing areas to appear as if they were an unfinished painting. Shelly painted provided us with initial pencil sketches and the finished paintings. Using photoshop brushes, I removed sections of the painting to make it appear as if it was in progress.

For both campaigns, we produced numerous point-of-sale items including: vinyl banners, magnets, cooler door decals, metal signs, table tents, counter cards, posters, and framed canvas artwork.

After the first year, the brand grew by 91% according to Beer Marketer's Insights. Supermarket sales were up another 51% through early November 2007, according to Information Resources Inc. The Artfully Crafted campaign remained in use by Blue Moon for over a decade. Artists nationwide were later commissioned to turn Bartek’s paintings into murals, as part of a larger social media campaign.

This resulted in an unprecedented amount of media coverage for Blue Moon. So much so, we also won a Gold Reggie for national consumer promotion — budgets under $1,000,000.