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Out of 14 Georgia winners, Wild Leap Brew Co. in LaGrange recently won twice in the Craft Beer Marketing Awards’ annual, worldwide competition, according to the CBMAs organization. Wild Leap won a gold Crushie award for best bottle design for a 22 to 26 oz. bottle and a gold Crushie award for best logo design/use of icon or mascot.

“We are thrilled to have won two gold Crushie awards,” said Rob Goldstein, Wild Leap CMO and co-founder.  “Our team works really hard to conceptualize the ideas behind our branding, including our logo usage on every beer and bottle label. We love that our iconic images — the bear and the buffalo — are continuing to gain recognition in the market.”

The term “Crushie” is based on the trophies businesses can win from the CBMAs.

A Crushie trophy looks like a heavily tattooed arm crushing a beer can to represent how breweries are “crushing it” with their beer marketing and branding.

“[The CBMAs are] a worldwide competition that focuses specifically on excellence in the artistic and creative marketing and packaging efforts of breweries, designers and agencies craft beer that play an increasingly critical role in differentiating brands in the retail marketplace,” said a CBMA press release. “We were so impressed by the sheer creativity, innovation, and caliber of marketing displayed in entries from around the world in every category,” CBMAs co-founder Jim McCune said.

“Our panel of over 300 judges from around the world had their work cut out for them this year,” co-founder Jackie DiBella said.   “The difference between winners came down to a quarter of a point in some cases – it was a tough competition.”

Georgia had the most winners out of any U.S. state. This year, a total of 196 awards were given out. There were 65 Platinum Crushie winners, 117 Gold Crushie winners and 14 Silver (Global) Crushie winners.