Beer campaigns remain the holy grail for creatives, and Joel Holtby has a matching set. His design chops and creative sensibilities have helped shape the renaissance of beer marketing in Canada after a big contribution to Kokanee’s The Movie Out Here campaign and Molson Canadian’s travelling beer fridge.
Like many his age, Holtby’s career started in the digital realm as a designer at Organic, but he’s expanded his skills into traditional media and customer experience. As a lover of design and print media, he was hesitant to jump into that purely digital role. Luckily, he “worked with some awesome people at Organic who shifted my point of view,” and took away serious skills in digital design that would serve him well.
After a year at Organic, Holtby joined Grip Ltd. in 2010 where, in addition to working on successful campaigns in traditional media like “Maynard’s Most Wanted,” he helped create the digital face of one of the most audacious marketing campaigns in Canadian history: Kokanee’s The Movie Out Here. Holtby steered the design of online consumer engagement elements—from online audition tools to voting sites for local bars vying to be film locations. The eight months of engagement work ahead of the movie’s launch did much to raise the brand’s profile and bumped sales in the lead up to the red carpet.
In 2012, Rethink scooped Holtby up as an art director—a move partner Aaron Starkman expedited after being impressed by his digital know-how. Holtby partnered with Mike Dubrick on the Molson Canadian account and created an idea that has earned international recognition: Molson’s red beer fridge. At the time, the agency had multiple teams developing ideas to roll out over a number of years. “They presented a one-sentence idea: a beer fridge that goes to Europe that can only be opened by a Canadian passport,” says Starkman. “That was it… but we saw right away that it was a powerful idea.”
Holtby and Dubrick were responsible for everything from the look of the appliance to how it was filmed during its first European excursion, where it served as backpacker bait for an online video. The campaign subsequently won Best Of Show at the 2013 Marketing Awards and a Cyber Lion in Cannes. These accomplishments, along with Holtby’s reputation as a kind soul and mentor, were recently acknowledged with a promotion to associate creative director.
“Sometimes creatives get this reputation for being a prima donna, but he’s not that at all,” Starkman said.” He’s a sweetheart of a human being who goes above and beyond. No one has a bad word to say about him at all. Just the nicest guy you ever want to meet.”
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