MOTORWORKS Miscellany.
A wide range of creative campaigns, fast-turn ideas, and high-visibility collaborations that became some of the brewery’s most memorable stories.
Some of the best moments came from a mix of strategy, timing, and knowing when a weird idea had a story worth chasing.
During my time at Motorworks Brewing, in addition to running the sales team and a myriad of other duties, I led a wide range of creative campaigns, collaborations, and fast-turn projects that became some of the brewery's most memorable stories. While we were certainly buttoned up on our core go-to-market strategies, we also knew how to shake things up to stay in the news and public eye. What follows is a small selection of the projects that defined the era and tell the real stories of how a regional craft brewery was able to punch well above its weight.
Adoptable Lager
A collaboration with Shelter Manatee put real adoptable dogs on beer cans, earned worldwide media attention, and helped reunite one featured dog with its original owner years after going missing.
Adoptable Lager began as a local awareness campaign with a simple, highly visible idea: use beer cans to spotlight real dogs available for adoption. While serving as Sales & Marketing Director at Motorworks Brewing, I led the campaign strategy, marketing, public relations, and rollout in partnership with Shelter Manatee. The project quickly moved far beyond its original local audience, earning coverage from CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and hundreds of other outlets. The campaign became an ongoing distributed beer series, with new adoptable shelter dogs featured quarterly on cans. It also went viral twice. After the initial wave of national and international press, one of the dogs featured on the can was recognized by her original owner in Minnesota, years after going missing from her then-home in Iowa. Once ownership was verified, the reunion sparked a second wave of media coverage, including a feature on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. The campaign remains one of the clearest examples of how a simple creative idea, grounded in a real community cause, can reach far beyond its original audience.
Gronkzilla
A 24-hour creative sprint turned Gronk’s arrival in Tampa Bay into one of Motorworks Brewing’s fastest, loudest, and most successful product launches.
When Rob Gronkowski signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, we saw an opportunity to connect an already-scheduled beer release to the excitement building across the Tampa Bay area. Within 24 hours, our team had renamed the beer, developed a fully designed label, ordered the labels, built the launch plan, and sent out a press release. The speed of the project helped generate TV appearances, articles, and broader media coverage, turning a quick creative pivot into a highly visible local release. Within two weeks, Gronkzilla was in distribution at more than 100 accounts, with placements secured through football season at many locations. The most surreal moment came during a nationally televised Bucs vs. Giants game, when a broadcast splash screen introduced Gronk as “Gronkzilla,” a nickname that had not been part of his public identity before our product launch. The beer became a fast, fun homage to Tampa Bay sports culture and the energy around Gronk joining the team.
Fermentis Camino
Turning an El Camino into a working koelschip? Strange idea, perhaps. Certainly one that made people stop, laugh, and immediately want to know more.
After months of joking internally about whether Jose’s El Camino could actually become a functional koelschip, the idea became real when we found a heat-resistant, food-grade liner that made the project possible. Once the El Camino bed was properly lined, the team gathered on the coldest day in early 2018 to brew the beer together, then camped out in the beer garden overnight to make sure nothing unwanted made its way into the beer while it naturally inoculated. The next morning, we pushed the El Camino back inside and sent the beer off for a long fermentation, with time spent in both oak and stainless steel. After several months, Fermentis Camino was packaged in 500mL green bottles and released with a story that was every bit as strange as the beer itself. I led the marketing and public relations around the project, helping turn a collaborative in-house experiment into a story picked up by national and regional press.
Intellectual Property Ale
A cease and desist became the catalyst for a rebrand that poked fun at the situation, gave the beer a second life, and immediately drove sales velocity far beyond the original.
After Motorworks Brewing received a cease and desist related to INDY, the brewery’s core IPA, I decided to make light of the situation and rebrand the beer as Intellectual Property Ale. The tongue-in-cheek pivot turned a legal headache into a sharper, more memorable product story. The concept played directly into the moment, with packaging that stamped “CEASE!” and “DESIST!” across the can alongside the new name, Intellectual Property Ale, aka I.P.A. The rebrand gave the beer a fresh identity, a clear point of conversation, and a reason for customers and accounts to re-engage with a familiar product. What could have been handled as yet another car-themed name change became a chance to show the brewery’s sense of humor, move quickly, and turn an unexpected challenge into a stronger brand asset. The new version immediately outperformed the original in distribution and became one of Motorworks Brewing’s best-loved SKUs. The experience also became a personal crash course in trademark law, which later helped me file and obtain more than 10 trademarks with the USPTO.
The Dali Musuem Collab
A creative collaboration with The Dalí Museum brought Salvador Dalí masterworks, original artwork, augmented reality labels, and nonprofit support into one highly collectible beer series.
The project brought together craft beer, fine art, technology, and local cultural impact through a partnership between Motorworks Brewing and The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg. The collaboration included two limited-release beers inspired by Salvador Dalí, his work, and the Museum’s collection. The first release, Salvador’s Wit, was a surreally purple witbier brewed with Spanish Tempranillo grapes. The cans featured four separate label designs, each showcasing one of Dalí’s masterworks from the Museum’s collection. Through The Dalí Museum app, each label also unlocked an augmented reality experience with animation and narration, adding a digital layer to the physical package and making the cans feel more like interactive art pieces than standard beer packaging. The second release, Rhinocerotic, was a golden gose inspired by Dalí’s fascination with the rhinoceros horn as a symbol of perfection. For that beer, our in-house artist, Eric Sahlsten, created an original Dalí-inspired rhinoceros illustration, giving the project both a direct connection to the Museum’s collection and a new piece of artwork made specifically for the collaboration. Sales from the collectible cans supported The Dalí Museum’s mission to preserve Dalí’s legacy and serve as an active cultural resource for the community. It became one of the rare projects where beer, art, storytelling, package design, augmented reality, and nonprofit support all came together in a cohesive campaign.
Mooby's Fun Time Ale
A cease and desist became the catalyst for a rebrand that poked fun at the situation, gave the beer a second life, and immediately drove sales velocity far beyond the original.
Built around Kevin Smith’s Mooby’s pop-up restaurant, Fun-Time Lager brought Motorworks Brewing into the wider Jay and Silent Bob fanbase with a release designed for beer drinkers, film fans, and collectors alike. As a lifelong film buff and longtime Kevin Smith fan, working on this collaboration was a dream project for my inner movie nerd. It gave us the chance to build something that felt true to Kevin Smith’s world while still functioning as a real, fast-moving beer launch. The can design was where we got to have the most fun, packing it full of Easter Eggs and references for fans to discover. This activation was for a 2 week pop up and we had to move quickly, the initial order of 200 cases was sold out the first weekend and we scrambled to make additional product to last the duration of the pop up. To pull this off I called in some favors at our label provider for same day printing, moved around our production and packing schedule so we could can additional cases, and figured out logistics to deliver the additional product to our distributor within 2 days. The result was one of the most personally rewarding collaborations I worked on, with all 500 cases sold during the activation - which more than doubled anticipated volume.
Kiehl's Cosmetic Collab
A category-crossing collaboration with Kiehl’s Since 1851 brought craft beer into the beauty world through two apothecary-inspired releases used for product launch events in multiple states.
The Kiehl’s collaboration was a fun chance to take Motorworks Brewing outside the expected craft beer lane and build something for a completely different category. Working with Kiehl’s Since 1851, we created two co-branded beers inspired by ingredients used in their skincare products: Magic Elixir, a Calendula and Aloe Hefeweizen, and Hydration Libation, a Ginger and Hibiscus Berliner Weisse-style ale. The project translated Kiehl’s heritage apothecary visual language into craft beer packaging, creating cans that felt connected to the brand while still working as beer releases. The beers were used for exclusive Kiehl’s product launch events in California and New York, giving the collaboration a footprint beyond Florida and showing how a local brewery could support a national brand activation. The campaign also earned national press coverage and a feature on Tampa Bay’s Morning Blend, helping turn an unexpected pairing of beer and skincare into a memorable cross-category project.
Motorworks Miscellany
Over 8+ years as Sales & Marketing Director, I was fortunate to help create and lead a long list of memorable campaigns, collaborations, media moments, and community opportunities.
Each of these projects could probably carry its own feature writeup. Collaborations with Bern’s Steak House, Zane Lamprey, Streamsong Golf Resort, Girl Scout cookie pairings, Bourbon, Beer & BBQ events, TV appearances, community activations, and even turning beer into hand sanitizer during COVID all had their own stories, challenges, and strange little moments that still make me smile. In the interest of keeping this page focused, I’ve gathered them here as a collection within the collection. They represent the pace and range of the role over more than eight years: building partnerships, finding angles, creating experiences, supporting the community, getting the brand in front of new audiences, and bringing a lot of weird, fun ideas to life along the way.