Background
The Ontario Craft Cider Association represents the province's craft cideries, and its Drink Ontario Apples brand speaks to consumers on their behalf: cider made from Ontario apples, by Ontario producers.
Challenge
Craft cider is fighting for space in the ready-to-drink category against big brands with big budgets and sweeter, less local options. People love sugar and they love familiar labels. The association needed to give Ontario cideries a stronger voice, with a campaign that made local and natural feel like the obvious choice.
Solution
We created a persona for the brand, Alexa, to carry the story. She takes viewers from the orchard to the glass: picking, pressing, fermenting, and pouring, so every step shows how close to home and how natural Ontario craft cider really is. The campaign kept the focus on the people and places behind each bottle rather than on the product alone.
Outcome
The Drink ON Apples campaign won a Platinum Hermes Creative Award in 2025, and it grew into an ongoing partnership: we now run a year-round content creator program for the association and manage its social media.
In our first month managing the association's channels, its content reached more than 41,000 accounts and earned over 68,000 impressions, led by Instagram. Event and award content consistently performed best. Our post celebrating the Ontario cideries recognized at the National Wine Awards of Canada was the top post from June to September, reaching 2,096 people and drawing 121 engagements, including 16 shares. During Ontario Craft Cider Week, a coordinated week of posts kept engagement steady from start to finish.
