Arrogant Bastard?

This is Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing, pictured, I am informed, at the National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego last month. And yes, that face on his tee shirt is, erm, Greg Koch.

Greg recently received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Award for San Diego, and will go forward as a finalist in their national competition. Accepting the award, Greg said,

Receiving this award is a true honor. I’m proud to accept it on behalf of the intense—yet rewarding—work that my business partner Steve Wagner and I have put in over the past 15 years to help unite people who have exquisite taste with craft beers that have the same.

Proud, determined, aspirational. Makes the heart soar. A bit like Bono. A true Mission Statement for the craft beer movement.

Here's another pic...

The picture on the presentation screen appears to be God as envisioned by Terry Gilliam for Monty Python & The Holy Grail. I think those people in the surplices are Stonies (like Moonies) ready for Stonestown, where Kool-aid will not be on the menu. We've had cult beers. Now we have the world's first Beer Cult.

Only kidding. However...

The point of all this is that we know that BrewDog take a great deal of inspiration from Stone in the marketing and promotion of their business. Therefore, I'm offering a prize for the first person to send me photographic evidence of either James Watt or Martin Dickie wearing tee shirts adorned with their own fizzogs. They're at The Rake this evening (flogging shares, I imagine...), so take your camera and be ready. I'll give the first person to send me the goods a bottle of decent beer. Or a beermat. Or something. BrewDog management and staff are encouraged to enter. Especially James and Martin.

Take The Money And Run

I have to confess I never bother with the ads in either 'What's Brewing' and 'BEER", CAMRA's newspaper and periodical for members, respectively.

However, with all the heat over Roger Protz's April op-ed about keg, and the feedback in the current WB letters page being broadly supportive of the man they apparently call 'The Colonel', and then Tim Webb and Tandleman doing the head-to-head on whether CAMRA should support all craft beer on page 55 of BEER, I allowed myself a snigger at the ad on page 32 of the latter organ.

Brouwerij Duvel Moortgat's UK ad people have taken a full page to plug their Vedett lager to CAMRA members. I assume the Men In Red Braces managing the account see the membership as a perfect captive audience for their Imported Premium Lager. Indeed, I believe many CAMRA members are fond of Duvel and the Moortgat tradition. However, the more dogmatic of them (the "Kevin's") will probably be going up the wall and across the ceiling over an invitation to drink Vedett on draught.

I seem to recall complaints in issues of WB past, over the type of advertising CAMRA accepts (such important matters as implicitly condoning short measures seem to crop up regularly), but I suppose a fee is a fee, even if the product is that yucky "chemical fizz". I bet next month's letters page in WB will be interesting, though...

Greene King Still Apparently Embarrassed About Beer

Here's the third* of Greene King's newspaper ads promoting their pubs. As I mentioned here, they have built the campaign around responses to a survey...


"But Sidney," you may reason, "everybody knows pubs sell beer. This is a chance for GK to attract new trade by offering an experience that isn't beer-centric." You might have a point. Personally, I think they have a subconscious fear that punters will pop in for a warm by the fire and a beverage, and accidentally order GK IPA and swear off pubs forever.

No 'proper pub' should ever sell Greene King IPA.

* Disclaimer: there might have been more than three of these ads by now, but for some reason GK aren't buying space in The Sun. I found this one in the new Independent 20p comic/digest, 'i'...