Recently, the Brewers Association rolled out a new marketing campaign called “Take Craft Back” which purports to be a crowdfunding effort to buy AB InBev. While they are only $2.5 million to their $213 Billion goal, the movement is gaining steam and national attention. Here’s the video that launched the campaign:
After watching this, is there any question as to the seriousness of this venture? It’s exceedingly clear from not only the video but also the website that this is a marketing campaign meant to further the conversation about how Big Beer is buying up craft breweries which in turn creates more obfuscation in the marketplace and ultimately whittles down choice in the marketplace. One of the best lines on their website reads, “It only seems impossible if you really think about it.” Which is funny AND true.
Let’s be clear, the Brewers Association doesn’t really expect to raise the money needed to buy a company that would be unlikely to sell even if the money was raised. Also, doing some simple math shows that we would have to raise 1 million per day for the next 583 years to reach that total. So, yeah, it’s not happening. That didn’t stop some people who didn’t watch the video, didn’t go to the website and didn’t read most articles about it from spouting off their opinions. These are from the American Home Brewer’s Facebook page in the comments of the video after it was posted:
“This still doesn’t offer anything. What does a pledge ACTUALLY do? How will you collect? What’s to say AB would ever even accept an offer or allow this to happen? Why should homebrewers be in charge of this and not breweries?”
“This is stupid and a waste of time. And if this did succeed, who is self-appointing to be the board, CEO, CFO, etc. what is the end game plan?”
“What in the hell? Where does the money go when they don’t get enough? Who is getting rich here?”
This guy, however, gets it:
“Society has done gone and lost its chill… This tongue in cheek campaign catches fire in a matter of hours and responses range from skeptics crunching numbers to marketing geniuses explaining how this won’t work…
Financial geniuses: Would a limit of $1,000 pledges be put on this campaign if it was serious?
Marketing gurus: Count the shares, count the comments, count the likes…BA is WINNING!”
People wondering about where the money is going, how it the buy-out will work etc. are missing the mark. Once again, it shows how people only read the title of a post, article or video and are more than happy to barf their outrage all over social media. It’s unclear what possesses people to comment on something they didn’t read/watch, especially when they want to bash it. In this case, if they just took a minute to go to the website, it would be extremely clear that this is a marketing campaign aimed at getting attention and bring awareness to the issue at hand. They aren’t taking credit cards for pledges, there are jokes all over the site, and the video is dripping in satire.
In the end, the “Take Craft Back” campaign is doing its job. Not only is the beer community talking about it (New Belgium, Stone both shared and posted about it) but it’s actually getting national attention in publications like the Chicago Tribune, Men’s Journal, Forbes and more. To outline how important this is to the cause, don’t look any further than a recent interview with a MillerCoors executive where he waxed poetically about the craft beer industry. Pete Marino, the head of Tenth and Blake (MillerCoors craft beer division) was interviewed about the state of craft beer. While that alone is an eye-roller, his comments were interesting in the wake of this Take Back Craft Campaign.
“It’s no longer good enough to brew an interesting beer, throw a catchy name on it, throw it on the shelf and expect it’s going to sell. So you’ve got to start thinking about awareness. You’ve got to start thinking about building and driving a brand.”
Well then, good job, Brewers Association, because this campaign is all about building awareness. While he was speaking about bringing awareness to a specific brand, it’s not a stretch to apply this mindset to awareness on the topic of independence vs. Big Beer. When asked if he thought that the BA’s Independence label is effective he said:
“Is there some small percentage of consumers that are going to be seeking that? I’m sure. But the overwhelming majority I don’t think are going to care. They want a good beer drinking experience from brands they can identify with.”
Does this “overwhelming majority” not care because they just want a “good drinking experience” from brands that have a large marketing budget or do they not care because they don’t even know about the issue? With the help of this marketing campaign, maybe more people will become aware and start to think about which companies they support. The more info that gets out to the average drinker, the more likely they are to care about what happens in the craft beer industry. The rest of the article is rife with big beer talking points (people are tired of too many choices, branding is going to win in the end) so it’s definitely worth read. In the meantime, I pledged $1000 and got a sweet koozie out of it. Totally worth it.