Blue
Ribbon
Flavor.
A full-campaign art direction for Cornbread THC Seltzer — from tagline to terrain
blue ribbons to its name — and a campaign to match.
Cornbread Hemp's THC Seltzer had earned genuine recognition — Gold at the High Spirits Awards, 1st Place at the International Non-Alcoholic Competition, Vice Editor's Choice — but the brand's visual language hadn't caught up to its accolades.
Know Nothing was brought in to develop a cohesive campaign that could stretch from digital ads to physical murals, from packaging to point-of-sale. The brief: feel authentically Kentuckian without being corny. Celebrate the wins without flexing awkwardly.
The result was a campaign built around a single unifying image — the blue ribbon — and a through-line material that tied every touchpoint together: hemp rope.
Where bluegrass grows,
good flavor flows.
"The hemp rope strings the campaign together being a through-line of the different images. It's reminiscent of the rope used by everyday folks in Kentucky but also the rodeo, or fair. The rope is what ties us together even if we don't know it."
Every
touchpoint.
Gold, High Spirits Awards 2025.
The rope
holds it together.
A campaign system is only as strong as the connective tissue between its parts. For this campaign, that tissue was physical: hemp rope, photographed and composited into every major touchpoint.
The rope appears stringing blue ribbons in the hero poster. It frames the calorie claim in the social carousel. It visually anchors the outdoor mural. In the email, it strings across the header.
The rope also carries layered meaning: it references the agricultural reality of hemp farming, the folk culture of the county fair, and the idea of community — things tying people together that they may not even consciously register.
Flavor Flight
not a bundle.
The Cardstock
Coaster.
The coaster is where campaign design meets tangible activation. Die-cut in the shape of a blue ribbon, the front features foil-treated text — "THC Seltzer / Blue Ribbon Flavor" — on the Cornbread crest.
The back becomes a game: a spinner wheel mapped to all four flavors. At festivals, retail activations, or bar placements, the coaster becomes a "choose your drink" moment — a mechanic that also gets people to physically interact with the brand and try a flavor they might not have chosen otherwise.
It's a leave-behind that does double duty: brand impression and product education in a single printed piece.
The credentials
that earned the ribbons.
by S.A. Spirits Awards
Competition 2025
Award 2026
All three credentials were woven directly into the campaign — present in the poster, the social carousel, the email header, and the Flavor Flight packaging — making the awards a visual element as much as a marketing claim.