Project: The Blue Moon Art Project

Goal: Bring attention to the Blue Moon Art Project by creating a new logo and brand package, create a new kick-off event featuring beer tastings, and host the party at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art.

Team:

The Focus Group has a long history of working with cities, chambers of commerce and main street organizations to help market locations to new audiences. We were especially excited to go back to work with the Ocean Springs Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau to help raise awareness and revamp one of their premier events – The Blue Moon Art Project.

The Blue Moon Art Project celebrates art and artists and is the official kick-off event for the massively popular Peter Anderson Arts & Crafts Festival. While the kick-off event has a history of being in the Ocean Springs downtown area with several locales playing a role, for this event our account executive and event planner Elizabeth Adams decided to partner with a cornerstone in the Ocean Springs art community, the Walter Anderson Museum of Art. This strategy was two-fold
1. Hold the event indoors to keep all of the art easily accessible to attendees and art buyers
2. Invite new audiences to experience the Walter Anderson Museum of Art

Here’s how The Blue Moon Art Project works. Around August of every year, the Ocean Springs Chamber of Commerce – Main Street – Tourism Bureau and F.E.B. Distributing Company’s Blue Moon makes a “Call to Artists” to create their interpretation of the Blue Moon Brand.

Specifically the artists are encouraged to craft a piece of art, in the form of a painting, depicting the individual’s interpretation of Blue Moon. Ocean Springs isn’t the only city to host one of these events, with other host cities including towns such as Madison, Wisconsin and Austin, Texas!

For the Ocean Springs event, each artwork entry was placed before a jury committee, who selected one winner’s work to be the symbol for Blue Moon’s marketing surrounding the following year’s Peter Anderson Arts & Crafts Festival. Any Mississippi artist 21 years of age or above was able to enter for a chance to win $2000.

For the 2016 event, we wanted to highlight the art and the beer, so we created unique pairings to be matched with the paintings and the hor d’oeuvres in the museum.
Check out this list of beers that were as unique as the art they were representing:

Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale

Blue Moon White IPA

Blue Moon Cinnamon Horchata

Blue Moon Chai Spiced Ale

Blue Moon Belgian White

The 2016 winning piece, “The Natural Favorite”, by Elizabeth Huffmaster, will appear on signage, souvenir cups during the 2017 Peter Anderson festival season and heavily featured during 39th Annual Peter Anderson Arts & Crafts Festival.

The announcement of the winning art project was made on Sunday afternoon during the Peter Anderson Festival, along with the announcement of the People’s Choice Award.

More than 150,000 attendees had the opportunity to vote for their favorite piece among the “Top Ten” art submissions. The 2016s winner of the People’s Choice Award went to Tonya Hebert of Biloxi, Mississippi for her piece titled, “I’d Give you the Blue Moon”.

Press Release
Winners Announcement