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The Big Beer Conspiracies – The Shock behind the Top

September 24, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

I wore my finest tinfoil hat a few weeks ago when I probed the malty innards of Miller’s marketing monstrosity, Fortune, but that entire post was built from my own subjective interpretation of events. I had no proof of my assertions, just a hunch, an inkling, a little trickle of doubt that I saw turning into a deluge of truth at some point in the future.

But this time around, my crazy conspiracy actually has some tangible heft (in the form of documentation). I found a mangy little JPEG bouncing around Twitter and can’t attest to it’s veracity, but it certainly looks real enough, and if not just a clever piece of satire, reaffirms a lot of what I’ve thought about Big Beer’s approach for a long time now.

Shocking Top

Anyone who has ventured deep into the dusty aisles of beer stores of late knows about Shock Top. It’s right there in cans and bottles, sixers and mixers, the silly anthropomorphic slice of orange logo grinning at you from his banner of “Belgian White.” It’s popularity (and in turn production) surged 61% in 2011-2012, and it surpassed all the other rapidly expanding breweries, like Lagunitas and Bells.

The beer is right smack in the middle of what I’d very scientifically describe  as “meh.” But I’m not here to bash the beer. It’s not to my taste or something I’d buy, but a lot of people like it (if sales figures are to be trusted) and I’m not one to objectively analyze subjective wants and likes.

No, let’s leave the beer itself out of this. Instead, let’s focus on the creeping, sneaking message behind the beer.

It’s something a lot of those with their ear to the brewery floor have known for a long time: Shock Top lives a dirty, dirty lie. Like it’s competitive brethren, it wants you to believe that it was crafted delicately, intentionally, by a local, small brewery who cares about their beer and their customers. A meticulously crafted campaign dances on the beer store stage like an ornate Kabuki mask, distracting you, deceiving you, convincing you that you’re buying into the decadent world of craft beer every time you walk out of the store with a twelve pack of Shock Top on your arm.

Shock Top is owned and brewed by Labatt and ABInBev (a massive conglomerate that holds 47.2% of the beer market share in the US), not some local, small, craft brewery. The majority of people associated with beer already knew this, and the merits of “pseudo craft beers” have long been argued and analyzed in the “craft vs. crafty” debate. Most of the argument comes down to economics, with the Brewer’s Association (I might argue rightfully) not wanting the massive behemoths of beer cutting into their market share with dubious advertising strategies instead of competitive products.

But the “problem” with crafty beer was nebulous and hard to pin down, especially when trying to explain the differences between Shock Top and say, Allagash White, to the non-brewing savvy public. There was little to go on other than, “it’s brewed by a huge corporation and that makes it evil beer or something.” The defenders of small and local didn’t exactly have the strongest rhetorical basis in the world.

Until now.

Proof! Long beautiful proof

This image appears to be a “Connections Brief” from Labatt/ABInBev regarding their marketing plans for Shock Top. While jargon-stained copy is typically boring and inconsequential, this particular document reveals a lot about how Big Beer views its consumers, and how they view beer, as a commodity, in general:

shocktopshocking

The main (and really only) ruse that Shock Top intends to perpetuate is that it comes from a “small brewer.”

This is the beating heart of the hideous beerbeast, the one thing it must do to continue feeding on the consumer dollars it needs to live. For a while, you could have considered that a side-effect of that brand, or some other unlucky coincidence, but here we see that this behavior is deliberate and intentional, the malicious brain child of an earnings report meeting and the executive board.

Regardless of how the beer tastes or if you like it, Labatt/ABInBev is lying to you to sell its product.

Sure, it’s lying by omission (as they’re not actively denying that Shock Top is brewed by a big company if you look into it), but it’s still lying. And that, as a consumer with dollars to spend, should piss you off. They want you to believe this came form that little guy down the street, the one who poured her entire life into a small business, who just wants to brew good tasting beer and sell enough of it to make a living doing what she loves. I’ve got news for you: the average small brewer doesn’t use phrases like, “drive penetration with Experience Maximizers in the “Reward Myself” need state.” 

I mean holy shit, they don’t even call it beer, they call it “approachable liquid.”

Bad gets worse

Perhaps even more egregious than the omission of key information is the fact that Labatt is playing into the “craft beer is confusing and intimidating” idea. Their anecdotal drinker, “Matt,” claims (in rather palpably business-like tones) that most craft beers are too pretentious for him to even try them. This is Labatt swinging a baseball bat and hitting two demographics squarely in the jaw in the same follow through. First, they’re insulting their own demographic, suggesting they’re not sophisticated or educated enough to make their own choices about what to drink, and second, they’re insulting those who do choose to drink other beer, dismissing them as pretentious assholes.

To finish off this cavalcade of corporate shenanigans, Labatt has a plan to continue to “maintain micro/craft credentials” even though it doesn’t have any to begin with. Their entire campaign to sell an incredible 40% more beer is built off of the backs of all those small business based breweries (some who are still struggling financially), riding the “craft beer revolution” without actually adding anything to it, and literally cashing in on an insane amount of money in the process.

The whole point of this renaissance in beer is to give beer enthusiasts higher quality, better tasting options. It’s also sort of a grassroots resurgence in supporting local small business, giving back to your community economically, saying hell no to big-box and hell yes to family owned and run. Labatt doesn’t care about that. They don’t care about local economies, and more importantly they don’t care about the people they’re foisting their product on.

To the brewer down the street who puts a little bit of her own soul into every batch she brews, you’re a valued customer keeping her business afloat. To Labatt, ABInBev, and all the other big beer guys, you’re just a wallet that they need to set to the “Reward myself” need state.

And now we have the proof.

As an added bonus, I managed to find the original tracked changes version of the Connects Briefing with some notes that didn’t make it into the final:

ShockTopProjectSuperSekrit2014(For the record, this last image is a recreation and a poor attempt at satire, I’m not some amazing hacker who can find old documents. Sadly, scarily, the original document is real as far as I can tell.)

The Big Beer Conspiracies – Miller Fortune is in the Cards

March 27, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

I want to preface this post by saying that I am a normal, rational human being and don’t buy into any conspiracy theories/cryptozoological phenomenon except: Sasquatch, chemtrails, Area 51, Elvis still being alive, the British Royal family being lizard people from space, aliens building the pyramids, the lost city of Atlantis, HAARP, and New Coke.

I definitely didn’t consider the X-Files a very well done, long-running documentary series, so don’t ask (because they’re listening).

::repositions tinfoil hat::

Like any good conspiracy theorist, I’m not going to let finicky facts or dubious data get in the way of what I believe. I’m just gonna go with what my gut (and the chip implanted in my skull) is telling me on this one:

Big Beer (read MillerCoors and ABInBev) is intentionally brewing bad beer to trick macro drinkers into staying loyal to their mainstay beers.

Not following? The proof is right in front of us, we just have to open our eyes to the truth.

Take the new Miller Fortune, for example. The Miller marketing masterminds are throwing every craft-like thing they can at this beer, from its description including “hints of bourbon” (which may or may not be trying to reference the run of bourbon aged craft beers we’ve seen of late), trying to serve it in special glassware, and this direct quote from the press release that suggests this beer will transcend normal drinking somehow:

“With that in mind, we developed Miller Fortune to provide consumers with a unique and deliciously balanced option to elevate their drinking experience.”

They want Joe-Adjunct-Lager to think this is a craft beer. Or at the very least, representative of craft beer. They want every average Miller Lite jockey to pick this up and assume they’re in on the “craft beer scene” by drinking this beer. That’s a key step to this whole, sneaky process.

There’s one fatal flaw that contradicts all of the sleek promotional gimmicks: it tastes like Jersey Devil urine. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. It tastes more like hummus that rolled out of a grocery bag in the trunk of someone’s Toyota Prius only to be discovered, fuzzing with green life, some indeterminable amount of time later. No, no, too extreme. But it does have a certain, familiar, wretch-inducing aroma. A taste like a wisp of memory on my tongue, of a time spent blurred, on a college campus but not part of this reality, with large glass bottles taped to my hands.

Ah, yes. Malt liquor. That’s the taste I was looking for.

You could do a blind taste test, and I’d put $1000 dollars on no one, not even the most refined Colt 45 connoisseur, being able to pick out Miller Fortune in a line up with Olde English 800, Hurricane High Gravity, and (my personal favorite) King Cobra. I should also note that MillerCoors owns the Olde English 800 brand, and it may have crossed my mind that all they did was pour some of that into different bottles, garnish it with a fancy ad campaign, and hope no one noticed. I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

Even if it is just re-branded 40oz gold, it still doesn’t taste good. I guess the 6.9% ABV is supposed to offset this by sheer factors of drunkification, but if this is supposed to be some new flavor territory just waiting to be charted by adventurous, treasure seeking, beer archaeologists, it fails. This is like Indiana Jones and the Walmart Crusade. A bad idea that should have never left the brainstorming session, horribly executed to the tune of several million dollars.

It’s a bad beer. I think it was brewed that way deliberately. But why? Because craft (or whatever we want to call “good” beer these days) is winning. Slowly chipping away at the market share, slowly stealing Friday-night happy hours and paychecks from the maws of the adjuncted overlords.

And I think they are panicking. Their stranglehold is weakening; the more they tighten their beery grip, the more drinkers slip through their fingers. So they get desperate, and do stuff like this. They get a non-craft drinker to try something new – hey, it’s from their good old friend Miller, after all – with the (secret?) hopes that they’ll hate it.

And when they hate it, what does the drinker do? They form opinions about all craft beer. They tried the “craft beer thing” having downed a few bottles of Miller Fortune. All that “complex flavor” and “bourbon aging” isn’t for them. They don’t need a fancy glass; they still prefer to drink straight from the can or bottle.

Then they go out, buy another 30-rack of Miller Lite, and Miller wins.

Or so Miller hopes.

::puts on anti-radiation suit::

I have to go get the mail.

fortune

“We are always in a constant state of conspiracies, at least thats what they keep telling us…” ― Faith Brashear

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