By GREGORY ZELLER //
Twelve New York-based winners – including two Long Island companies sharing a double win – paced the field in the 2022 Craft Beer Marketing Awards.
Known colloquially as “The Crushies,” the CBMAs is an annual competition designed to celebrate the best in craft-beer marketing and design. Less about the beer inside than the packaging outside, the annual program – founded in 2019 Jim McCune and Jackie DiBella Curry, craft beverage executive director and account manager, respectively, at Melville’s EGC Group – aims to honor slick slogans, eye-catching labels, clever social media campaigns and other non-taste factors that compel us to sample small-batch brews.
The contest has grown quickly into an international sensation, with competitors from across two continents throwing their mugs into 39 different categories. Design awards spotlight the best cans and bottles (different sizes), the smartest packaging, the coolest websites, the niftiest taps and most stylish merchandise; other honors highlight microbrew-based social media campaigns, human rights causes, sustainability efforts and “Best Original Videos” (split into subcategories Humor, Series, Cause-Related and Storytelling).
Jackie DiBella Curry: Embracing labels.
Among this year’s big winners was Patchogue-based Blue Point Brewing Co., which – along with partner DWS Printing Associates of Deer Park – earned a Global Crushie and a Gold Crushie for “Best Original Video/Storytelling.” Blue Point was among the subjects of DWS’s Face to Face, Coast to Coast video series, which visits microbreweries around the country for the story behind the suds.
It was not Blue Point Brewing’s first trip to the CBMA podium: In 2021, the Patchogue brewhouse earned a Gold Crushie in the “Best Can Design/Americas” category, one of 10 platinum and/or gold awards earned by New York brewers in that second-annual CBMA competition.
Blue Point Brewing’s 2022 awards were among dozens presented to competitors from the United States and Europe during an April 28 livestream event presented by the EGC Group and German multinational Hillebrand, the contest’s longtime presenting sponsor.
With contestants taking shots in America, Europe and UK divisions, this year’s winners were determined by 500-plus industry professionals representing 24 countries, who evaluated entries in nearly 40 categories before making their picks.
DiBella Curry, who co-hosted last month’s livestream with McCune and their “amazing partners” at Hillebrand, offered a “big, big thank you to our judges.”
“We could absolutely not put this on without you guys,” the CBMA co-creator said during the event. “All of you together are an extension of our team of two.
“We are very, very happy to see all these winners take home Crushies.”
Trophy case: Crushie-ing the competition.
Among the new categories introduced to the evolving competition for 2022: four additional “Best Can Design” categories, three new “Best Brand Identity” categories and three unique “Beer Marketing Wild Card” categories.
All told, a dozen New York-based enterprises captured Gold, Platinum or Global Crushies this year, in categories ranging from “Best Use of Retro Branding” (the New York State Brewers Association) to “Best Merchandise Design” (Brooklyn’s Other Half Brewing).
The New York State Brewers Association – a statewide nonprofit founded in 2003 as a promotional and legislative proponent for New York microbreweries, brewpubs and affiliated businesses – was the biggest of all New York winners, capturing four Gold Crushies and one Platinum Crushie.
McCune saluted the entire slate of international winners, noting that capturing a coveted Crushie is harder than it sounds.
“Thanks to everyone who competed,” the co-creator added. “Each year, the competition gets more and more fierce.”
The full slate of 2022 winners is available here.
