January 18 marked the World Beer Festival's 6th year in Columbia. With interest in craft beer growing nationwide - and the city on the brink of its own brewing renaissance - bigeyedbird creative saw an opportunity to make 2014 a transformative year for the festival. After five years, the festival had lost its general novelty in the market, and it was beginning to show in declining ticket sales.

All About Beer Magazine and Columbia's first brewery, Conquest Brewing Company, collaborated to produce a special edition beer - available exclusively to Columbia's festival attendees. Leveraging Columbia's emerging craft beer scene, bigeyedbird creative developed a press angle highlighting local and state breweries participating in the Beer Festival - shifting focus from previous years touting brew quantity over quality. This strategy proved to be a successful one, with 2014 ticket sales back to their highest numbers since 2011's double-session sell-out.