Three Floyds Brewing is celebrating 30 years by doing exactly what it has always done best: refusing to behave normally. The Midwestern craft brewer has launched “30 Years of Not Normal,” a new integrated campaign from Someoddpilot that drops two of the brand’s most recognizable characters, Zombie Dust and Gumballhead, into decidedly ordinary Chicago situations.
Across OOH, social and digital, the characters show up grocery shopping, mowing lawns, hanging around garages and bowling. In other words, the kind of everyday Midwestern environments where a giant undead beer mascot and a chain-smoking cartoon cat tend to stand out.
The campaign builds on Three Floyds’ existing “It’s Not Normal” platform while giving the brewery’s 30th anniversary a distinctly Chicago flavor. Rather than simply buying outdoor placements around the city, Someoddpilot used familiar local settings as the backdrop for a visual gag rooted in the contrast between mundane life and Three Floyds’ anything-but-mundane universe.
At a time when much of the craft beer category is contracting, Three Floyds says it is outperforming the category and using the anniversary as an opportunity to invest in its brand rather than pull back. “30 Years of Not Normal” also sets the stage for a broader evolution of the company’s identity and beer portfolio.
The work stays true to the brewery’s DIY roots in more ways than one.
Instead of creating Zombie Dust and Gumballhead through CGI or AI, Someoddpilot turned to Margaret Rolicki, a primary artist and fabricator within GWAR’s Slave Pit Inc. art collective, to bring the characters to life as physical costumes. Two Someoddpilot employees even climbed inside the suits for the shoot.
ddsdvs
The result feels appropriately handmade, strange and a little grimy, connecting craft beer culture with the theatrical excess of metal rather than polishing the brand into something safer for its 30th birthday.
That connection carries into the soundtrack, provided by thrash metal band Municipal Waste, extending Three Floyds’ longstanding relationship with heavy music and underground culture.
“The Three Floyds brand has been so successful because they’ve always known what they are,” said Annika Welander, CEO of Someoddpilot. “For this new campaign, we leaned all the way into that heritage, borrowing aspects of metal music culture and bringing them to the everyday, mundane places where people actually drink this beer.”
For Three Floyds Marketing Director Cory Just, the challenge was bringing decades of beer names, characters, artwork, and attitude under one roof without sanding away the weirdness that built the brand in the first place.
“Three Floyds has never had a problem being different,” Just said. “We’ve spent 30 years building this world of amazing beers, characters, art, and ideas. The challenge was tying it all together without cleaning it up or losing what people love about it.”
Someoddpilot appears to have understood the assignment.
CREDITS:
BRAND: Three Floyds Brewing
- President: Jason McMackins
- Marketing Director: Cory Just
- Marketing: Allison King
AGENCY: Someoddpilot
- Chief Executive Officer: Annika Welander
- Account Director: Justin Hoot
- Partner: Anton Jeludkov
- Partner: Patrick Collins
- Associate Director: Ellen Evangelides
- Copywriter: Emma Pool
- Editor: Ellie Hall
- Designer: Wendy Robles
- Designer: Jackie Bonilla
- Photographer: Chris Bain
- Photographer: Vince DeSantiago
