A full-service marketing, creative branding and digital communications agency specializing in strategic content creation.

A Full Service Branding and Digital Agency | Lewis

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Food & Beverage

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Food & Beverage Companies We’ve helped Grow

Ready to see real creative solutions that produce real results? Reach out and we’ll get started.

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Let’s do something great.

Every ingredient is crucial to a recipe. And so is every aspect of your branding. From the color of your logo, to the typeface on your signage. Good food and beverage branding infuses every touchpoint your customers experience. We bring decades of expertise in food and beverage design. From logos, to websites, to package design. We offer a full buffet of branding capabilities that will always leave you satisfied. 

Food & Beverage Branding

Good People Brewing

#3B3B3B

Situation

Good People Brewing had the good fortune of perfecting their craft beer just as the craft beer boom happened. However, in focusing on creating a great product, they had left the marketing and packaging design to a series of freelancers. The result was that each beer looked like a separate brand.

From good to great.

Approach

With new craft beer brands being born every minute, packaging is the single most important tactic in making sure your brand stands out on the shelf. We knew they needed a distinct identity that reflected the care and knowledge that goes into Good People beer.

Solution

We designed a cohesive packaging system for their entire line of beers as well as a new website, a social strategy and video content.

Good People has expanded their brewery twice in four years in order to keep up with increased demand. Sales of all beers have increased and they’ve expanded distribution six times in the past two years.

Result

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Everyone knows that branding is much more than colors and a logo. It's an experience. We craft every touchpoint with thought and care. Creating a symphony of memorable moments from beginning to end. Crafting brands that feel once-in-a-lifetime every time.

Branding

The quality of video production says a lot about the quality of a brand. Whether it's a scripted commercial on TV or a customer testimonial on social media. Our in-house production team provides full-service capabilities. Lighting, shooting, casting, editing and finishing—we do it all from beginning to end. Growth is beautiful. And we make sure it looks that way.

Content Production

Behind every return on investment is a lot of number crunching. The same is true for marketing. We're equal parts left brain and right. Using data, analytics, and deep insight to inform standout creative. It's how we create advertising that moves the needle and brings measurable ROI. And that's a beautiful thing.

Marketing

Hero Doughnuts

#ea0029

Overview

Hero Doughnuts is a boutique chain of high-end pastry shops with a brioche-style doughnut as the signature item. Local chef Wil Drake and entrepreneur Jason Wallis turned to Lewis to ensure the branding created anticipation for their brave brioche treats. In addition to crafting Hero’s brand identity, the Lewis team was challenged to design packaging that was uber-affordable for the brand to begin selling doughnuts at pop-ups to minimize their up-front costs.

Serving the Community in a Hole New Way.

Results

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Serving the community in a hole new way.

Casey Jones Distillery

#93674C

Casey Jones Distillery initially approached us to redesign packaging for their Casey Jones Moonshine. However, since research revealed that most consumers had neutral to negative associations with moonshine, we knew it would take more than new packaging to change the way consumers think of the product.

SOLUTION

To position Casey Jones Moonshine as a premium heritage product that’s for everyday use, we had to make it about more than water, corn and sugar. We had to tell the rich story of Casey Jones, the original king of the Prohibition-era Kentucky stillmakers, and his grandson, Master Distiller Arlon “A.J.” Jones. We did this with new identity and packaging, a new website featuring craft cocktail recipes, new print and collateral, new distillery signage and a strategic presentation to their distributor.

Within a short period of time, Casey Jones Moonshine saw a significant spike in sales as well as a major increase in the number of visitors to their distillery.

Distilling a new brand in a new category.

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Bill-E's

#1b1212

When William “Bill E” Stitt approached Lewis about creating a brand for Bill E’s Small Batch Bacon, we couldn’t say “yes” fast enough. After all, who doesn’t love bacon? Especially bacon selected from the finest hogs, hand-turned every 2 hours in small batches, rubbed with nitrate-free pink curing salt and brown sugar molasses, and serenaded by local singers and songwriters behind the stage at Old 27 Grill, Stitt’s restaurant and grocery in Fairhope, Alabama.

Bringing home the bacon.

When you hear Bill E talk about what makes his product so special, his passion for bacon is infectious. So who better to tell people about Bill E’s Bacon than Bill E himself? We used quotes from Bill E in all media tactics, capturing his personality, conveying his expertise, and most importantly, communicating how his product is superior to others.

We created a brand for Bill E’s Bacon that reflects the artisanal quality and craftsmanship of the product. Tactics included brand identity, social media presence, collateral and merchandise. We also built a website with a focus on storytelling and e-commerce.

Nine months after launch, sales had increased 22%. The website had 21,000 unique visits and sales to all 50 states, far exceeding established traffic and financial goals. In-store sales doubled. We also grew their social media followers by 1000%.

Bill E’s is now sold in grocery stores and is featured as a key ingredient in 5-star restaurants across the Southeast. The campaign continues to drive awareness and sales. Bill E’s Bacon has been featured on Gear Patrol, Uncrate, Our Southern Souls, This is Alabama, and Food Network. 
As a result, Bill E’s is living high on the hog: they were recently named one of America’s top bacon brands by Food & Wine Magazine.

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Retail & eCommerce

Vermont Brewers Association

Vermont Brewers Association represented 56 craft breweries in the state (the most per capita of any state) and has a pretty important role. For starters, Vermont is one of the pioneers in the craft brewing movement, which is a major tourism draw for the state. Yet, the Vermont Brewers Association had a brand that couldn’t stand up to the quality and craftsmanship held by its brewery members. After a national search for branding firms, they chose Lewis to develop a new brand and marketing strategy that would better position the organization for conveying the unique Vermont brewing story.

Beer worth finding.

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Kentucky Bourbon Trail®

#A25630

The KBT™ was formed 25 years ago and has grown into one of America’s most beloved ways to taste and explore 46 distilleries, drawing more than 2.5 million visitors annually from all 50 states and 25 countries. After a national search of agencies, Lewis was selected to develop a new brand and website as part of their 25th Anniversary celebration in 2024.

A brand worth savoring.

Brand Identity

The distilleries on the trail have created new and elevated experiences that are bringing in a more affluent guest. To better reflect today’s experience there was a need for a new brand identity that conveyed a joyful sense of discovery, elevated adventure, and attainable luxury.

The Digital Experience

In addition to the new identity, creating a new digital experience was critical. A reimagined Kentucky Bourbon Trail® that encourages greater exploration, slowing down and savoring the moment in an online experience that’s easier to understand, navigate, plan and enjoy. The new site now allows for better tracking, optimization and understanding of visitors which will in turn help the KBT and distilleries better plan for the future.

The new KBT brand and website launched to raise glasses from across Kentucky and the globe. Leveraging earned media coverage across national and international markets, we reintroduced bourbon’s birthplace to millions of eyeballs and set the stage to welcome even more discerning palates.

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Travel & Tourism

#092646

After rebranding the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® and launching its new website, Lewis and the Bourbon Trail™ hosted the first-ever Worldwide Toast to Kentucky Bourbon. On September 17th, 2024, Bourbon enthusiasts worldwide were invited to join a 26-hour live stream event celebrating at 4pm in every timezone around the world – featuring special guests and Bourbon notables thanking viewers for making Kentucky Bourbon a global success.

A Worldwide Toast to Kentucky Bourbon.

Goals & Challenges

The event aimed to spotlight Kentucky Bourbon's global popularity while expanding the Bourbon Trail's reach to affluent international tourists. Success was measured by participation and social growth, targeting 2,500 participants across 10 countries and a 1% increase in social followers. However, the campaign faced challenges, including the complexity of hosting a large-scale live stream, requiring round-the-clock management, and custom streaming solutions to accommodate a live stream lasting longer than 24 hours – a feat more than one of our partners had never done.

The Worldwide Toast generated a collective reach of 17 million through social and earned media coverage with toast participants representing 32 countries across 6 continents. Celebrity guests like Chef Art Smith and Maria Montgomery amplified the buzz. Exceeding goals, the event saw thousands of live stream participants, 3,300+ new social followers (1.28% growth), and a 60% spike in KBT website traffic, marking its highest session count YTD. The successful campaign not only strengthened brand affinity but also established the Toast as a new annual tradition.

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A worldwide toast to Kentucky Bourbon.

Unless you like wasting money, return on ad spend is a necessity. We take a deep and constant look at every touchpoint in your customer's journey. Optimizing areas that are potential hiccups. Why are so many customers abandoning carts? Is it taking too many clicks to get to what they want? Could they be upsold before checkout? In the end, if your marketing dollars aren't converting into sales, something is wrong. And that's exactly what we're here to fix. 

ROAS

Lewis once again raised a glass to global connection with the 2025 World Bourbon Toast™, created in partnership with the Kentucky Distillers’ Association for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®. Building on last year’s success, the event expanded to an even larger stage — Bourbon & Beyond, the world’s largest food, Bourbon, and music festival. Broadcasting live from Louisville, Lewis brought together Bourbon fans from around the world for an immersive, day-long celebration of Kentucky’s most iconic spirit.

Bourbon Toast 2025: Taking Kentucky Bourbon Global

From live interviews with distillers and musicians to the “World’s Biggest Toast” on the festival’s main stage — attended by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear — the event showcased the power of cultural storytelling and real-time engagement. The result: a major lift in awareness, engagement, and global reach for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® brand.

The 2025 World Bourbon Toast™ proved that with the right mix of creativity, collaboration, and cultural resonance, one toast can truly bring the world together — Bourbon in hand.

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This year, digital media has really had to stay on their toes — poised and ready to jump at any second. With all the consumer privacy regulation changes, and now, the real slime of the earth deciding to take ad fraud to a whole new level, there’s a lot to keep an eye on.

A [recent profile of ad fraud](https://www.trafficguard.ai/news/digital-ad-fraud-a-profile-on-north-america#:~:text=The%20recent%20profile%20of%20ad,at%20%2444%20million%20per%20day) in North America by TrafficGuard and Juniper Research estimates that within the next five years, advertisers will be losing $100 million a day due to ad fraud. That represents an increase of 125 percent since 2018. They’re also predicting that by 2023, 1 in 5 ad transactions will be derived from fraud. That sounds bad. But until everyone is clear on exactly what ad fraud means, we can’t move on to the solutions. So, here we go.

The simplest way to explain it is this: Ad fraud is when you pay for ads to appear somewhere online, and you think they did — because the reports say so. But no one saw your ad. The data was skewed from fake clicks from bots or click farms.

Even worse, from the vantage point of the brand or agency paying to run the ads, ad fraud is difficult to detect. Before we explain how we’re working to mitigate the risks of ad fraud for our clients (and ourselves), we want to make sure you’re up to speed on all the basic ways ad fraud can happen.

Common Types of Ad Fraud

Unfortunately, the slime balls behind ad fraud are no dummies, and they’ve managed to create multiple pathways to stealing your marketing dollars. The list of digital mediums where ad fraud rears its ugly head continues to grow, but there are several common pathways you’ll want to keep tabs on to start.

Click fraud

This is the most common, simplest type of advertising fraud. Fake traffic is generated through either an automated clicking platform or through click farms. A sign of this would be a higher than usual click-throughs that don’t lead to a sale.

Domain spoofing

Basically, this is impersonating a website. By building a domain and design that appears to be the intended site where your ad would run, the people running these sites can receive payment for your ads, but those ads will never be seen. This is also a common identity theft tactic.

Ad stacking

This happens a lot with programmatic ad placements. It’s when a publisher sells multiple ads on a website, but they’re all stacked on top of each other blocking those behind the top ad. The ads gain fake impressions, even though they’re not really being seen by users.

Pixel stuffing

Similar to ad stacking, only the ads are placed within pixels on the webpage, and they are not visible to potential customers. You end up paying for impressions when there’s zero chance of the ad actually being seen.

Location-based ad fraud

Location is super important to industries such as retail, quick-serve restaurants, the automotive space, and many others. These businesses rely on potential customers being close in proximity to their business. So, in order to take advantage of that, fraudsters fake the geolocations on mobile devices to place them around a specific location, causing brands to deliver ads to people in their target locations who aren’t actually there. With fraudsters taking advantage of all of these weak spots — and this is just a few — it can start to feel like the situation is getting more and more dire, but is it? We believe there are ways around the fake data.

The Ad Fraud Situation Is Bad, But It’s Also Manageable

The amount of digital ad fraud has grown to represent billions of dollars, and naturally, many marketers are now asking, “_Is this still an efficient and effective channel for my brand?_”

Yes, yes it is. As long as you know what you’re doing. While the numbers are concerning on the surface, the amount by which a specific brand experiences ad fraud with their campaigns will vary drastically, and ultimately lies in the hands of whoever manages their media. All programmatic buys are not created equal, and anyone that's running and optimizing a campaign strictly based on their Demand Side Platform’s (DSP) algorithm without strategic oversight is contributing to these crazy high fraud stats. In layman’s terms, allowing a DSP to completely automate the way you’re running ads, taking a set-it and forget-it approach is a risky move.

Back when programmatic media was popularized... Years ago, when programmatic buying was the new and shiny object, many of us were attracted to the idea that we could hit KPIs with the platform algorithm doing all of the heavy lifting. We would push long-tail impression volume to get the largest sample to then prospect from for conversions. Never mind that many of those conversions weren’t actions taken by real humans. And by the way, we paid for those fake events.

Smart media teams today should avoid that approach alone. While algorithms are still a close friend, we can’t put all of our trust in their judgment. In order to avoid fraud and maintain a level of brand safety, we also tap into premium publisher white lists, private marketplace deals (PMPs), walled garden inventory (i.e. Google FLoC products) and first-party data from site tags and customer databases. Our cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) aren't going to be dirt cheap, but the value of what we're delivering is higher and more qualified.

The fact is that fraud exists, and it is undoubtedly present with the campaigns we run. However, we’ve found an approach to buying and reporting programmatic media that involves multiple checks to minimize bot traffic and wasted ad dollars. Here it is:

How To Minimize and Prevent Ad Fraud AND Have Successful Digital Ad Buys:

- Use analytics to examine the traffic our campaigns are driving. Check that the geography of the session matches the targeting, and look for suspicious patterns as related to site traffic, bounce rates, time and user path once on the site.
- Run every programmatic buy through a third-party ad server to get unbiased confirmation that the impressions reported by your DSP match with what you believe was purchased. If they don't, negotiate a makegood.
- Pay an additional CPM to layer filters from [Double Verify](https://doubleverify.com/), [Integral Ad Science](https://integralads.com/), MOAT, etc on top of programmatic buys.
- Apply proprietary exclusion lists and exclusion lists from DSP to avoid known domains for fraud.
- Review site transparency reports from campaigns on a regular basis. This is done in order to confirm that ads are running in brand-safe environments, and it will allow you to proactively identify any suspicious domains so that you can add those to your already existing exclusion lists.
- Always Push to optimize digital campaigns to the most specific KPIs (not just CTR) where possible. While bots can still trick conversion tracking, if you're an agency or marketing partner, when you’re layering actual data from the brand over your reports, you will be able to validate what you’re doing as legitimate.

While the full picture of ad fraud will continue to evolve as the fraudsters learn from their mistakes and find ways around our fixes, the dangers still lie mostly in unmonitored programmatic media buys. So keep your eyes open, and keep reading articles like these to stay ahead of what’s coming. No one hates losing advertising dollars more than we do, so [let us know if we can help](mailto:newbiz@lewiscommunications.com) shed more light on any fraudulent media concerns you may have.

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Ad fraud (and how to mitigate it.)

Whether we’re talking about a big university or a small college, a public college or a faith-based organization, the Big Ten Conference, or the ACC — all of these higher education institutions have one thing in common — every one of them relies on enrollment to survive. 2020 posed new challenges to overcome for the higher education category. Since the pandemic hit, many students have delayed enrollment. The [National Student Clearinghouse Research Center](https://nscresearchcenter.org/stay-informed/) reports **overall enrollment as being down 3.3 percent. Freshman enrollment is down 13 percent, and community college freshman enrollment is seeing a 19 percent decline**.

When enrollment is down, faculty and board members start to wriggle in their seats. Meetings about the future feel different and less anticipatory. And the need for a tangible plan becomes imminent, regardless of the available budget allocated for recruiting or marketing. Not every school has a ton of money lying around to put towards marketing. Which begs the question, what do universities and colleges do when they absolutely have to get more students enrolled without a big budget at their disposal?

What we can tell you from first-hand experience is that, regardless of your budget, you have enough to make a positive impact. You just have to be focused about how you use the money you have. That starts with nailing down the opportunities that will create the most value.

Just like in our personal lives, it’s hard to explain to other people who you are when you aren’t sure yourself. The same concept applies to higher education brands. So, what are the important blocks that build a college or university’s brand identity?

⇢ Digital user experience
⇢ Messaging
⇢ Imagery
⇢ Colors
⇢ Logos
⇢ Mascot
⇢ Merchandise

All of these things are what help students, alums, staff, and faculty build and show pride in the institution they’ve chosen to be a part of. For instance, if the people who have already committed to your school don’t feel connected to your message, colors, mascot, or merchandise, they won’t wear their school t-shirt or plant a bumper sticker on their car. They may not even recommend the school to their circle of friends — prospective students. That’s a problem...but a very fixable one. Your school simply needs to get to the core of who you’re representing.

We had the opportunity to help [Bethel University](https://www.bethelu.edu/) find its own true brand identity. The goal was to dig deeper into who they are as a university and explain it to the public in a clearer, more impactful way. Learning more about their students and faculty was the first place we wanted to start because they ARE Bethel University. The insights we gleaned from those key interviews helped shape the new positioning of Bethel: **Become You**.

Why, “Become You”? We learned that Bethel’s student-base and prospective students consisted of many first-generation college students coming into their college experience from a different vantage point than many other schools. Our approach was intentional — creating a narrative that communicated partnership. Bethel’s faculty would be there, walking alongside students in those formative years of college as they figure out who or what they want to become.

The new Bethel message needed to be felt across every arm of their brand. Students enter a college or a university with excitement and anticipation. They want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves, and we wanted to help Bethel give them that. So we promoted "Become You" through as many tactics and mediums as the budget would allow.

We redesigned their logo and mascot, chose new fonts and colors, and helped their team create modern merchandise their students, alum, and faculty could wear proudly. We also designed a billboard with the new positioning displayed. But all of those changes are only part of the bigger puzzle. There were more holes to fill in order to get enrollment up...one in particular: their website was losing prospective students.

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Sometimes you’re too close to the problem to see the solution yourself. Bethel needed help to evaluate and identify the possible pain points for prospective students hindering them from enrolling. They have three colleges, and right away, we realized that those colleges being separated into their own websites was an issue. Those siloed pages needed to be integrated into one, united, modernized Bethel University brand website.

After an in-depth brand audit, we also discovered the potential for an even broader footprint for prospective students in the Middle Tennessee area. Our media team put a strategy together to meet potential students on the platforms they were already engaging with and utilized an omnichannel approach, both online and off to put Bethel on the radar of potential new grads all over the state. With a plan to get the word out, next, we needed to redesign and rebuild the website where prospective students would visit to formulate their opinion about Bethel.

Long before a student ever steps foot onto your campus, they will visit your institution’s website. New grads may have heard of your college or university, but it’s unlikely that they’ve ever seen the campus or had a chance to get a feel for what it would be like to be a student there.

Your website will be their first impression. What they experience when they land there will impact how they ultimately decide on whether or not your school will be on their list to visit — which puts them just a few steps away from enrolling. What message will your website send to these new grads? Is your image dated? Is it reflective of the education system you’ve worked so hard to build? Does your messaging accurately represent the ways you empower and educate students who attend classes there every day? Is it easy for prospective students and their families to navigate? If not, you can change that. But don’t start reaching out to web developers just yet. There are a few critical steps to take before you start rebuilding a website.

Rebuilding a website can almost be trickier to navigate than building one from scratch because determining which content is still relevant and migrating that content takes time. We highly recommend an agency partner to help guide you through the process. There are a lot of decisions to make that will directly affect the success or failure of the new site and any paid efforts made to direct prospects there.

Here are some of the big questions to ask yourself before you get started:

- Have you clearly defined your target audience?
- Do you have the right CMS for the type of content your website will host?
- Are there new brand guidelines in place? Fonts? Color pallets? Design standards?
- What is the main goal for your new website? What features should exist in order to meet that goal?
- Do you have a clear path for how users will navigate the site that ladders up to the goal?

After we helped answer these questions for Bethel, we were able to take their 16 separate websites and combine them to develop one fresh, cohesive website centered around personalized features to drive applications and interest in the NEW Bethel. While the website was under construction, we created two temporary landing pages for all digital ads to direct to as part of a data capture campaign to drive enrollment by offering interested students opportunities to learn more.

Bethel’s website became a one-stop resource for all types of students. We added a feature called, “[I Am](https://www.bethelu.edu/i-am)” to tie back to their new mantra, “Become you” which allowed users to select how they identify — as a prospective student, parent, etc. The resulting content was intuitively customized based on their selection. The results were exciting.

Here’s what a Bethel alum, Chris K., had to say about the new site:

>“This site represents the Bethel that I know and love. It makes me a very proud alum. #BecomeYou”

How a newly branded website drove enrollment

The first step to any higher education application process happens online. That’s a fact. With enrollments down since the pandemic, higher education can’t afford to have any hurdles in the way of potential applications on their website.

That’s why the key pages that drive enrollment were our focus for Bethel. Those key pages have all seen incredible growth.

⇨ “Learn More” for the Traditional campus saw a 70 percent increase in submission.

⇨ “Learn More” on the College of Professional Studies increased by 30 percent.

⇨ 300 leads generated for the College of Arts and Sciences and College of Health Sciences (Nearly 10 percent of current undergraduate enrollment).

⇨ “I Am” page visits are up 706 percent

⇨ The “Application” page is up 1,547 percent.

⇨ “Admissions” page viewership is up by 84 percent.

The project started with rebranding and messaging, then it evolved into lead generation and paid media that all tied back to the new Bethel that exists online on their website. Their site now simply reflects who they always were as a University, and the culmination of all of these efforts has paid off.

Any budget is enough to create more pride in your brand

The website rebuild was just one piece of the puzzle we needed to solve to get enrollment up for Bethel, and, like so many small Universities, they didn’t have boatloads of cash to do it. They had to stay focused on the goal and which tactics would best support it.

“Become you” has implanted itself much deeper than simply on their website. Today, their President and leadership team regularly refer back to this positioning, reminding their faculty and students that Bethel is a place where it’s ok not to know who or what you want to be yet. It’s a place to learn exactly that.

Any strides you can make towards creating a brand that your students, alumni, faculty, and staff feel pride in will be money well spent. Your website is important, but only because your people are excited to send others there. Your t-shirt designs may not seem like they deserve much time or energy invested, but if no one wants to wear them, that’s a statement that means more than you might like to admit. Change happens over time. But it starts by staying focused on tangible tactics.

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Case Study: How a rebrand improves higher ed enrollment.

Did we just use the “R” word? The National Bureau of Economic Research isn’t yet ready to declare one, but there’s no doubt that both businesses and consumers have the possibility on their minds. 
Is that kind of anticipation changing consumer behavior? More importantly, should it be changing yours?
As a financial marketing professional, you are tasked with stretching every dollar of your marketing funds in the best of circumstances. At the cusp of a possible recession, the temptation is certainly there to pull back. But, our view is that it’s also the most powerful and cost-effective time to build a deeper relationship with your customer base. 
In the course of our own experience with financial institutions, we’ve identified three steps you can take to maximize the impact of your marketing dollar during uncertain times:

Food & Beverage

From The Blog

Let’s do something great.