LETTER FROM NORTH AMERICA

So, craft beer is “silly,” is it? Well, yes, it is, at least according to a recent interview with Lion Little World Beverage’s marketing director, Adrian Mooney, in Marketing Week magazine.

“It can be silly,” Mooney is quoted as saying, “If you’re unfamiliar with what an IPA is or a session IPA or pale ale, that’s confusing enough, but when people put wacky names on top of it, like ‘electric disco forklift truck’ it makes it harder.”

In response to all this silliness and confusion, which Mooney says includes “people sniffing hops and talking about where the hops are from,” Lion Little World’s Fourpure brewery is effecting a full line rebrand, designed to be more straight-forward and well-defined than what Mooney suggests is the craft beer norm, and to remove itself from the “pretentious image” craft beer is sometimes perceived as having.

Now, I’m no marketer, much less a marketing head who has worked for such diverse brands as PepsiCo, Britvic, and Tetley, however it strikes me that craft’s silliness has worked pretty well for it so far. But let’s review.

In the United States, generally considered the global template for craft beer growth, the craft segment increased over 400% between 2005 and 2019, rising from 6.3 million US barrels to around 26.3 million, according to Brewers Association statistics. In so doing, it grew to a 23.5% market share in terms of dollars and a 12.3% share of volume in 2020, both of which would have been considered pipe dreams back in ’05.

(Those market share stats are actually down a bit from 2019, over a full percentage point in volume terms, but this no doubt owes much to the pandemic effect, for while the toll COVID ultimately took was much less than initially feared, the lack of on-premise sales for most of the year and the time it took for breweries to transition to direct-to-consumer sales certainly had an impact on volumes shifted.)

And Mooney’s cure for what ails this industry that has emerged from the fringes of brewing to account for almost one in four dollars spent on beer in the U.S.? According to the article, and the design of the new Fourpure labels, the answer is apparently more of what led the legacy beers of the major international brewers into declining sales in the first place: sponsorships, television ads, and a brand image that is slick, styled, and largely homogeneous.

Which is not to say that it won’t work, at least to a degree and in the near term. By all reports, Fourpure is on a growth trajectory already, and I actually quite like the new look, but to frame all this as a response against what has gotten craft this far already seems, well, odd, to say the least.

Instead, Mooney could have demonstrated a far greater understanding of the nature of craft, and gained serious craft cred, if he had focused upon some of the real issues that are dogging the segment, as itemized in detail in a recent article written by Queer Brewing Project operator Lily Waite in the online beer magazine, Good Beer Hunting.

One of the principle problems Waite points out is the ‘bro culture’ that has been an issue for craft beer throughout the 21st century thus far, particularly in the United States where, as Waite writes, “IPA is synonymous with toxic masculinity.” Other issues include a lack of quality control, a serious concern about which I have written here previously, an exclusionary culture, the disproportionate social media influence of novelty beers that can range from the merely odd to the truly revolting – viscous, slime-like Ghoul

Drool anyone? – and a casual disregard for intellectual property rights. Perhaps of greatest concern, however, and most certainly connected to almost all of the above issues, is an approach to employment that expects near-servitude of its chronically underpaid workers.

That last issue, which fosters not just a seat-of-the-pants, we’re-all-in-thistogether culture, but also tends to lead to bros hiring bros, is most insidiously linked to the overwhelmingly white, male face of craft beer, in the United States and, frankly, throughout most of the western world. And it is where Mooney could have much more effectively directed his criticisms.

Imagine if rather than bemoaning what he believed to be craft beer’s unfortunate lack of gravitas, Mooney had instead committed Fourpure to being a Living Wage, equal opportunity employer. Imagine if he had specifically called out the pervasiveness of the white, male face of craft beer and dedicated Fourpure to everyone, regardless of colour, gender, or sexual orientation. And imagine if he had offered lab services at a reasonable price to any or all of the London craft brewing community.

Now, that wouldn’t have been silly at all.

Stephen Beaumont