Kentucky Bourbon Trail®

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Overview

Lewis once again raised a glass to global connection with the 2025 World Bourbon Toast™, created in partnership with the Kentucky Distillers’ Association for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®. Building on last year’s success, the event expanded to an even larger stage — Bourbon & Beyond, the world’s largest food, Bourbon, and music festival. Broadcasting live from Louisville, Lewis brought together Bourbon fans from around the world for an immersive, day-long celebration of Kentucky’s most iconic spirit.

Bourbon Toast 2025: Taking Kentucky Bourbon Global

Approach

From live interviews with distillers and musicians to the “World’s Biggest Toast” on the festival’s main stage — attended by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear — the event showcased the power of cultural storytelling and real-time engagement. The result: a major lift in awareness, engagement, and global reach for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® brand.

The 2025 World Bourbon Toast™ proved that with the right mix of creativity, collaboration, and cultural resonance, one toast can truly bring the world together — Bourbon in hand.

Results

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Food & Beverage

Travel & Tourism

The quality of video production says a lot about the quality of a brand. Whether it's a scripted commercial on TV or a customer testimonial on social media. Our in-house production team provides full-service capabilities. Lighting, shooting, casting, editing and finishing—we do it all from beginning to end. Growth is beautiful. And we make sure it looks that way.

Content Production

Unless you like wasting money, return on ad spend is a necessity. We take a deep and constant look at every touchpoint in your customer's journey. Optimizing areas that are potential hiccups. Why are so many customers abandoning carts? Is it taking too many clicks to get to what they want? Could they be upsold before checkout? In the end, if your marketing dollars aren't converting into sales, something is wrong. And that's exactly what we're here to fix. 

ROAS

Behind every return on investment is a lot of number crunching. The same is true for marketing. We're equal parts left brain and right. Using data, analytics, and deep insight to inform standout creative. It's how we create advertising that moves the needle and brings measurable ROI. And that's a beautiful thing.

Marketing

Everyone knows that branding is much more than colors and a logo. It's an experience. We craft every touchpoint with thought and care. Creating a symphony of memorable moments from beginning to end. Crafting brands that feel once-in-a-lifetime every time.

Branding

Highlands College

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As a young, recently accredited, biblically based college moving to a larger, newly renovated campus, Highlands College wanted to elevate its brand. The challenge: Appeal to prospective students and skeptical parents by balancing the youthful energy of the college experience with the timeless tradition and stability of a legacy institution. Our refresh of the brand aimed to capture the spirit of Highlands College and position it for an ever-brighter future.

Branding for eternal impact.

Highlands College isn’t your typical college experience. But that doesn’t mean the students don’t yearn for a taste of those traditional trappings as they pursue their calling. Classic collegiate elements filtered through a modern lens resulted in a distinctive brand that students could take as their own as they pursue their “Life of eternal impact.”

Residence Hall

One of the most significant additions to the new Highlands College was its first-ever on-campus residence hall. With five floors, the dorms didn’t just require interior branding, but wayfinding that easily distinguished each of the floors. Drawing inspiration from the Bible, we named each floor after a different mountain where man encountered the Holy Divine, echoing the spiritual journey of the student. Distinctive colors, quotes, and minimalist, modernist patterns ensured that each floor was instantly identifiable as students acclimated to their new home. 

An increase in enrollment. Improved school unity and pride. And some of the biggest donations in school history are just some of the first fruits of this new era at Highlands College. An era full of hope for what comes next.

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reVive Light Therapy™

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Each August, Bama Rush dominates TikTok, turning sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama into a viral cultural phenomenon. In August 2023 alone, hashtags like #BamaRush, #BamaRushTok, and #RushTok reached over 104 million people. We sought to authentically insert reVive Light Therapy™, 
our light therapy skincare client, into this cultural moment to build Gen Z awareness and drive measurable business results.

How sisterhood sparked skincare buzz.

The Idea

We launched Glow On, Sister, a campaign designed to seamlessly match RushTok’s humor, energy, and aesthetic. Out of this umbrella, we created RushLux—a multi-channel activation that included hand-delivered light therapy skincare kits to sorority houses, cheeky sisterhood-inspired messaging, and outdoor boards and on-campus visibility. These efforts introduced the reVive Light Therapy™ Lux Collection’s bestselling devices to an entirely new audience, driving both awareness and engagement.

The campaign spanned TikTok, Instagram, email, and Snapchat, combining creator-style content, gifted products with on-site education and activation, and playful promo codes to drive both engagement and conversion.

By capitalizing on Bama Rush at its cultural peak, Glow On, Sister transformed reVive Light Therapy™ into a brand that felt relevant and aspirational to a new generation. The campaign proved that when cultural timing meets platform-native creative, you don’t just earn attention—you drive lasting growth.

The Results

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Retail & eCommerce

C Spire

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The launch of the new iPhone 17 is pretty much a national holiday for wireless customers. And for C Spire, it also marked a crucial opportunity to help debut its new brand look and campaign: “There’s more to C.” The only issue? Not knowing what the new iPhone features would be until two days before filming. Challenge accepted.

Apple, C Spire, and Lewis help launch the new iPhone 17.

With so many unknowns and a tight turnaround, flexibility and planning were crucial. So we built a modular conceptual framework around the latest iPhone rumors and our best guesses at what the features might be. We overplanned. Overprepared. And alongside the C Spire team and trusted and nimble production partners, we overdelivered. Quickly adjusting to the iPhone reveal, we created a spot that highlighted three unique features, more than any other carrier, while also demonstrating how C Spire’s network helps customers get more out of life.

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Abeka

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Situation

One of the leading players in the K-12 education space, Abeka, asked the Lewis team to develop the next iteration of their master brand. The main goal was to position brand Abeka as a leader in education, broadening their reach beyond a more niche audience.

Bringing the mainstream home.

Recognizing the opportunity to engage non-traditional audiences (beyond homeschooling parents or Christian schools), the Lewis team created a brand new platform for Abeka—Learning For Life. The new platform allowed our team to develop messaging  that focused on the child’s future success as a key motivator for parents, along with emphasis on character building and strong community values.

While directly trackable website visits aren’t the primary objective of a broad-reach tactic like TV, our buys drove impact immediately. The campaign launched in the summer of 2025, and within two months, it delivered 20 million impressions and generated 53,000 website visits from viewers who saw our spots on Hulu, Disney+, or Peacock and later visited the site from the same IP address. That 0.3% response rate exceeded industry benchmarks—especially noteworthy given the creative’s brand-building focus without a direct call to action. Beyond site traffic, brand recognition also rose quickly: within two months, brand search volume grew 81% year over year.

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After rebranding the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® and launching its new website, Lewis and the Bourbon Trail™ hosted the first-ever Worldwide Toast to Kentucky Bourbon. On September 17th, 2024, Bourbon enthusiasts worldwide were invited to join a 26-hour live stream event celebrating at 4pm in every timezone around the world – featuring special guests and Bourbon notables thanking viewers for making Kentucky Bourbon a global success.

A Worldwide Toast to Kentucky Bourbon.

Goals & Challenges

The event aimed to spotlight Kentucky Bourbon's global popularity while expanding the Bourbon Trail's reach to affluent international tourists. Success was measured by participation and social growth, targeting 2,500 participants across 10 countries and a 1% increase in social followers. However, the campaign faced challenges, including the complexity of hosting a large-scale live stream, requiring round-the-clock management, and custom streaming solutions to accommodate a live stream lasting longer than 24 hours – a feat more than one of our partners had never done.

The Worldwide Toast generated a collective reach of 17 million through social and earned media coverage with toast participants representing 32 countries across 6 continents. Celebrity guests like Chef Art Smith and Maria Montgomery amplified the buzz. Exceeding goals, the event saw thousands of live stream participants, 3,300+ new social followers (1.28% growth), and a 60% spike in KBT website traffic, marking its highest session count YTD. The successful campaign not only strengthened brand affinity but also established the Toast as a new annual tradition.

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A worldwide toast to Kentucky Bourbon.

A full-service marketing, creative branding and digital communications agency specializing in strategic content creation.

Work