- Agency: Citizen Relations Canada
- Client: Busch Beer
- Category: Print Design
- Location: Toronto, Canada
- Project Brief: Create print advertising that transforms hay bales into branded canvases, connecting Busch with Canadian farmers through an unconventional rural activation.
Beverage print work spends its life on cooler doors and case wraps. Busch Baleboards, a campaign by Citizen Relations Canada with Labatt and Busch Beer, leaves the store behind and wraps hay bales to look like giant crushed beer cans.
The gag lands because the proportions are honest. A round bale is already the size and shape of a can on its side, so the wrap reads instantly, right down to the dented aluminum lid pressed into the round face.
The label art does the heavy lifting, carrying the Busch mountain crest, the "Limited Edition" band, and the 355 ml mark at agricultural scale. Set against yellow canola and a prairie sunset, the branding looks native to the landscape instead of stapled onto it.
The campaign works as much for the drone shot as the roadside, with bales staged along a highway to catch passing traffic and the aerial camera. The catch is realism, since the flatter, faded wraps in the wide sunset shot lose the crushed-can illusion that the close-ups nail.
