Michelob ULTRA Trade Toolkit & Spiritual Home

Brand system and art direction connecting Michelob ULTRA’s global positioning to a 30+ piece on-trade, off-trade and sponsorship toolkit (NBA, COPA América), translating a business problem (an existing toolkit disconnected from brand strategy, indistinguishable from Bud Light or Gatorade) into a single, ownable identity system across materials, color and environment. Led design and creative direction at BridgerConway for AB InBev / Michelob ULTRA.

Michelob ULTRA competes in a $1.9T health & wellness market it wants to lead, against beer categories that already own their own territory: Corona has the beach, Budweiser has the stage, Stella has the table. Michelob ULTRA’s own trade toolkit had no equivalent: assets were designed per product category, with no inspirational world or design rationale behind them, so nothing at point of purchase told consumers “beer doesn’t have to mean giving up an active life.” The business win condition wasn’t more assets, it was assets a shopper could recognize as Michelob ULTRA’s and no one else’s.

I owned creative direction and brand strategy for the toolkit, defining the inspirational world, the design principles, and the design rules that made the system scalable across categories (POCM, on trade, off trade, sponsorship) and reproducible by teams and vendors across markets.