Yuengling's 2018 Take Flight, The Edge, Around a Yuengling campaign marks a deliberate shift from heritage messaging to inspirational lifestyle storytelling
Yuengling Spreads Its Wings With a New Narrative Direction
Yuengling's "Take Flight, The Edge, Around a Yuengling" is a three-part film campaign created by Laughlin Constable, published in the United States in May 2018 as the executional centrepiece of the brand's "Spread Your Wings" platform, marking a deliberate pivot from brewery-history messaging toward inspirational themes of friendship, ambition, and summer living.
The campaign launched on May 15, 2018, as reported by mediapost.com, and represented the first major creative work to emerge from Laughlin Constable's appointment as Yuengling's creative agency of record, which was formalised on March 12, 2018, according to wisbusiness.com. The integrated effort spanned video, audio, out-of-home, print, and social media, making the three films the narrative spine of a considerably broader media deployment. In the United States, where D.G. Yuengling and Son operates as the nation's oldest operating brewery, the shift in creative direction carried particular symbolic weight.
Each of the three films carries a distinct emotional register. "Take Flight" and "The Edge" lean into themes of risk-taking and aspiration, while "Around a Yuengling" anchors the platform in the quieter pleasures of shared moments and casual sociality. "The Edge" specifically depicted young adults engaged in meals and summer activities, as reported by mediapost.com, grounding the campaign's more abstract ambitions in recognisable, lived experience. Together, the three executions contain Yuengling's eagle imagery as a unifying visual metaphor, connecting the brand's heritage iconography to a contemporary, forward-looking emotional territory. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 61 out of 100.
Yuengling made a calculated decision to move away from brewery-history advertising in 2018. That choice reflected a broader tension in the United States beer market, where heritage-led messaging had become a crowded and diminishing creative space, with major players including Anheuser-Busch InBev and Boston Beer Company both mining their own origin narratives for brand distinction.
The strategic rationale behind "Spread Your Wings" was articulated clearly by Dan Fietsam, Chief Creative Officer at Laughlin Constable, who stated that the platform "expresses the love and zeal for the beer that's a strong asset for the Yuengling brand," as cited by wisbusiness.com. This language signals a deliberate reorientation toward emotional affinity rather than factual legacy, a move consistent with how premium and craft-adjacent beer brands were repositioning themselves in the United States during this period. According to craftbrewingbusiness.com, the craft beer segment in the United States was experiencing sustained growth pressures on traditional lager brands, increasing the urgency for legacy brewers to compete on cultural relevance rather than historical tenure alone.
The previous campaign, "Respect. It's Earned.", had launched in March 2016 with Philadelphia- and Boston-based agency Allen and Gerritsen, according to pennlive.com, and had leaned heavily into earned-credentials messaging. The pivot to "Spread Your Wings" marked a generational shift in Yuengling's creative ambition, moving from a posture of institutional authority toward one of shared aspiration. Tyler Simpson, Director of Marketing at D.G. Yuengling and Son, was named as a key steward of this transition, as reported by adstasher.com, signalling that the strategic shift had senior marketing leadership behind it within the client organisation.
Mat Lignel served as CEO and President of Laughlin Constable during the production of the "Take Flight, The Edge, Around a Yuengling" films, as reported by adstasher.com. The creative leadership structure was robust: Dan Fietsam held the role of Chief Creative Officer, Jon Laughlin and Grant Simpson served as Creative Directors, Phil Smith acted as Executive Producer, and Chris DeYoung and Allie Geise filled Art Director roles, according to clapboard.com. This depth of senior creative involvement reflects the significance Laughlin Constable placed on the campaign as its first major deliverable after being named agency of record.
The three films use Yuengling's eagle as a recurring visual anchor. Rather than deploying the eagle as a straightforward heritage symbol, the creative team recast it as an emblem of aspiration, freedom, and social pleasure, threading the motif through imagery of open landscapes, convivial gatherings, and moments of individual daring. This approach allowed the campaign to retain a visual continuity with Yuengling's existing brand codes while reframing their emotional meaning entirely. In the United States market, where beer advertising frequently relies on either ironic detachment or hyper-masculine tropes, the campaign's choice of warm, earnest aspiration represented a deliberate tonal departure.
The integrated nature of the campaign, spanning video, audio, out-of-home, print, and social media, as reported by mediapost.com, meant the three films needed to function both as standalone narrative pieces and as anchor content for a wider media ecosystem. The out-of-home and social extensions worked to reinforce the films' emotional themes across high-frequency touchpoints, giving the campaign breadth without diluting the core narrative register. Production credits beyond the named creatives are not fully documented in publicly available sources.
No verified performance data for the "Take Flight, The Edge, Around a Yuengling" campaign is publicly available. No sales uplift figures, brand-tracking results, or media-reach metrics have been attributed to named sources in the public record. Analysis of the campaign's structural effectiveness must therefore rest on its creative and strategic architecture.
The campaign's most durable asset is its coherence across three distinct film executions. Each piece functions individually while contributing to a unified emotional argument, a structure that benefits from repeated exposure across different media contexts. In the United States alcoholic drinks category, where consumer attention is fragmented across streaming, social, and traditional broadcast, the ability to deploy multiple short-form narratives under a single platform idea carries meaningful distribution advantages.
The integrated media deployment, spanning video, audio, out-of-home, print, and social media, according to mediapost.com, also suggests a budget commitment consistent with a brand attempting a genuine repositioning rather than a tactical refresh. The campaign's shift from institutional to aspirational messaging, as noted by pennlive.com in the context of Yuengling's prior "Respect. It's Earned." positioning, represents a structurally significant creative evolution. Whether that evolution translated into measurable commercial outcomes in the United States beer market remains unverified in the public domain. The Clapboard Score of 61 out of 100 reflects a campaign that demonstrates clear strategic intent and credible craft, while leaving room for sharper emotional specificity and more distinctive visual storytelling within its chosen genre.
"Take Flight, The Edge, Around a Yuengling" is a three-part film campaign created by Laughlin Constable for Yuengling, published in the United States in May 2018. It forms the executional core of the "Spread Your Wings" platform, shifting the brand's messaging from brewery-history advertising toward themes of friendship, aspiration, and summer living.
Laughlin Constable created the campaign after being named Yuengling's creative agency of record on March 12, 2018, according to wisbusiness.com. Key creatives included Mat Lignel as CEO, Dan Fietsam as Chief Creative Officer, and Jon Laughlin and Grant Simpson as Creative Directors, per clapboard.com.
The campaign marked a deliberate move away from brewery-history messaging toward inspirational lifestyle positioning, as reported by mediapost.com. Yuengling's prior campaign, "Respect. It's Earned.", had emphasised institutional credentials. "Spread Your Wings" replaced that posture with themes of ambition, freedom, and shared social experience in the United States market.
The campaign integrated video, audio, out-of-home, print, and social media, according to mediapost.com. The three films served as the narrative anchor for the wider media deployment across the United States, with out-of-home and social extensions reinforcing the campaign's core emotional themes at high-frequency consumer touchpoints.
The Clapboard Score for "Take Flight, The Edge, Around a Yuengling" is 61 out of 100. The score reflects clear strategic intent and credible craft execution, while indicating room for sharper emotional specificity and more distinctive visual storytelling within the alcoholic drinks category in the United States.
Mat Lignel served as CEO and President of Laughlin Constable during the production of the "Take Flight, The Edge, Around a Yuengling" campaign, as reported by adstasher.com. He led the agency that was appointed Yuengling's creative agency of record in March 2018, overseeing the full "Spread Your Wings" platform launch in May 2018.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
