By GREGORY ZELLER //
With new hops in its step, one of Long Island’s most innovative awards/marketing programs is back for another round, and bigger than ever.
Organizers are already accepting early-bird entries for the 2022 Craft Beer Marketing Awards, an annual competition designed to celebrate the very best in craft-beer marketing and design.
Any monkey with a tap can stage a taste test; the “Crushies” – founded by Jim McCune and Jackie DiBella, craft beverage executive director and account manager, respectively, at Melville’s EGC Group – honors the things that make us try a craft brew in the first place: the slick slogan, the eye-catching label, the clever social media campaign.
Launched in 2019, the CBMAs has quickly grown into a prestigious international competition. The second-annual contest, which spanned 2020-2021, attracted hundreds of competitors (and judges) from around the globe; the third-annual competition – entries will be accepted through mid-January, with winners slated to be announced in May 2022 – is brewing up even more interest, with the introduction of a new slate of contest categories.
Beer here: Founders McCune (left) and DiBella, always thinking.
Debuting in Round Three: four additional “Best Can Design” categories, three new “Best Brand Identity” categories, three unique “Beer Marketing Wild Card” categories and fresh honors for Best Use of Social Media Video. All told, the competition now features 39 distinct categories – ranging from Best Bottle Design to Best Website Design to Best Human-Rights Campaign – with 300-plus beer, marketing and design experts from around the world handing out the coveted Crushie trophies (which are themselves a work of art).
The introduction of new contest categories – with entries divided into five global regions – is a natural for the rising competition, according to McCune, who calls the Craft Beer Marketing Awards “a unique platform celebrating the beer industry’s incredible marketing and design,” which “wasn’t being recognized until now.”
“The CBMAs has grown significantly,” the co-founder added. “We’ll continue to award the very best work in the industry and showcase that work, and the folks that created it, to the world.”
DiBella credited the new categories to “great suggestions” from participants in the first two Crushies.
Colorful crown: Brooklyn Brewery, a big 2020-2021 winner, will be back for more.
“We had such incredible feedback over the past two award seasons,” she noted. “We know breweries and their partners are passionate about what they do – we wanted to make sure our categories matched the depth and breadth of their work.”
German multinational Hillebrand, a leading global beverage-logistics company, returns for its third year as presenting sponsor. The 2022 CBMAs also welcomes a new Gold Sponsor in Colorado-based logistics expert Arryved, which provides point-of-sale services for the wide-ranging craft-beverage industry.
Alex Ostler, Arryved’s head of marketing, called craft-beermaking “one of the most creative industries in the world” and said his company was excited “to recognize what … creators are doing to showcase [their] brew.”
“The CBMAS is an amazing way to recognize the great marketing that craft beverage makers and marketers do,” Prabh Hans, vice president of domestic services for Hillebrand North America, added in a statement. “The work by the CBMAS team is led by their passion for the industry, and it shows.”
