No, these beers aren’t about marketing

This started as a comment within the conversation following the previous post, but when it hit the third paragraph I thought it better to start anew.

Perhaps I should have made myself clearer.

– This is the opposite of marketing. We now have a broader choice of beers — some obviously better than others, and some pretty terrible — because brewers did not, and still do not, listen to marketers who said/say drinkers will not buy beers with distinctive flavor (America in the 1960s and 1970s). Sierra Nevada Pale Ale never would have got out a focus group.

Which is not to say that some breweries aren’t trying to attract attention by promoting they have the beer with the most this or the most that.

– The Halltertau hop growers started coming to the Craft Brewers Conference in 2007, obviously to promote sales of their hops. They do this by bringing beers that showcase their hops. Eric Toft, who grew up in Wyoming but who has lived in Europe for more than 20 years and been brewmaster at Private Landbrauerei Schönram for almost a dozen, writes the recipes for the beers. Victory Brewing in Pennsylvania brews them because a) Eric has a long-standing relationship with Ron Barchet and Bill Covaleski, b) Victory has contracts for barley and hops with Bavarian producers, and c) the logistics of licensing and shipping.

The pale ale was not created to sell anywhere, but to illustrate to other brewers (mostly American) that Hallertau hops make an excellent addition to beers other than those intended to mimic those from Bavaria. Basing a recipe, let alone a marketing campaign, on my tastes would probably lead to disaster, but my opinion is they are right. I’d much rather try a new not particularly high gravity pale ale made with Saphir or Smaragd (two newer varieties) and one amped up on another addition of Northwest hops. I like those beers, but well-done versions exist and it seems to standout brewers feel compelled to simply dial up the flavor intensity.

Just my opinion, but I’m not sure you will find a better spokesperson for tradition in Germany that Eric. He pitches his yeast cooler and conducts primary fermentation cooler than most, automatically adding time to the production process. He uses only aroma hops, but makes some of the hoppiest (this is a relative thing) beers in Germany. That means more hops, more expense.

Workers at the brewery skim the fermentation every day (open fermenters, also a pain in the brewers’ butt) so the bitterness is more mellow. Schönramer Gold, which won a gold medal in the World Beer Cup, lagers 10 weeks. That’s after the longer primary. You really need to visit the brewery restaurant (it’s not far from Salzburg) because its the only place you can get Schönramer Pils and Dunkel unfiltered.

He believes that drinkers can taste the difference. Landbrauerei Schönram has doubled production since Eric took over (this wasn’t a start up; been around for more than 230 years). At the same time consumption in Germany has shrunk dramatically, so maybe he’s on to something. Just as Ken Grossman and Jim Koch were a while back and Alex Ganum is today.

– The new wave of beer drinkers are asking questions other than “which beer has the most alcohol?” or “which one has the weirdest ingredients?” Some ask just that, but also about where the beer is from, about the ingredients, about production practices. They talk about flavor, and want to try new ones — sometimes “extreme.” But here’s what you should really love about them, Mike. They drive marketers crazy. The don’t just advertisers make things up.

10 thoughts on “No, these beers aren’t about marketing”

  1. Ummm, I’m struggling what to say here.

    What you describe above is a lot of people’s idea of marketing. It’s more customer driven marketing than the macro folks use, but it’s marketing none the less.

    And let me make a potentially controversial point. Craft brewers like Stone Brewing, Dogfish Head, and Sam Adams who are growing market share are not flying in the face of marketers, but are sucessful because they are better at marketing their beers than the macro folks. (And yes, they still have to deliver a superior product.) One thing the craft beer industry actually is quite good at, besides brewing great beer, is marketing.
    Not necessarily big time ads on TV marketing, but plenty of smart, grass-roots style, buzz generating activities to call attention to their products.

  2. Thanks, Derrick.

    No argument that marketing happens at all levels – being the local beer is a marketing point, for a brewpub that beer is made on premise, etc. My real point was that “the beers wouldn’t exist at all if people (we call them brewers) weren’t excited about what they make and how their work is received.”

    If the small-batch pioneers had relied on a marketing group they never would have released what became iconic beers. They made what they wanted to, but were smart enough to know that is what other people would want as well.

    Plenty of marketing followed.

  3. Why is “marketing” a bad word? True marketing is
    * Find out what the customer wants, and
    * Give it to them.
    To me, that’s a good thing. Of course, for most businesses, “Give it to them” must include “make the customer aware of the product”. Technically, that’s “advertising”, not “marketing.”

    Go read Seth Goden for a while. I think you’ll come away with a different view of marketing. I did.

  4. I see this as two different kinds of approaches to marketing:

    a) research prior to the product, etc. This is common among macros. They must be as certain as possible that a product will sell before start producing it. It is perfectly understandable. The scale of some of those breweries means that a beer will have to be brewed in a rather large volume with all the associated costs, and that can be a lot of money. Since macro breweries do not operate with very large profit margins, not to mention all the financial planning, forecast, shareholders’ expectations, etc, they can’t afford throwing who knows how many thousand hl down the drain. That usually results in them coming out with gimmicky beers that are trendy at the moment.

    b) marketing after the product is ready. Here we have what Stan speaks about. A brewer makes a beer because he/she fancied the idea and then they try to figure out how to market it. Many micros are much more flexible in that sense. They can afford brewing a few hl of a special beer, and they know that it is very likely they will sell much, if not most, of it without too much effort. There are plenty of ways to do it, festivals being one of them. This, of course, doesn’t mean that a given beer will not be gimmicky.

    And of course, there are points in between. There are plenty of breweries too large to risk putting a weird beer on the market, while at the same time, too small to afford a marketing research, advertising campaigns etc.

  5. My point (and this is something I have believed for many years) remains that too many brewers substitute marketing (gimmick beers – barrel-aged sour beers, for example -, funny/weird names – eg. Bavarian pale ale -, romantic stories – IPA was developed to survive the ocean voyage to India -, fake taste exclusivity – “It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth.”, etc.) for just making the best quality beer they could make.

    This morning I got a promotional program for my iPhone (great product, btw) from Avery Brewery. Here is part of what they say:

    “Since 1993 our brewery has been committed to producing eccentric ales and lagers that defy styles or categories.
    We are dedicated to making beer from the inside out: we brew what we like to drink–with utter disregard for what the market demands– and search out fans with equally eccentric palates (We learned long ago that expressing your true self is much more fulfilling than giving in to outside pressures. Don’t you agree?) If you think your taste buds can keep up with our brews, we invite you to check out our entire lineup of more than twenty different beers. ”

    And after all that, what do they make? A Belgian “quadrupel”, three IPAs including a DIPA and three stouts, among other beers. Most of their beers are Belgian or British “style”. “Utter disregard for what the market demands”? Looks quite the opposite to me.

    What I also find striking about this promotional writing is that they stress unconventionality (falsely, as it turns out) and completely ignore taste/quality.

    How is this kind of marketing any different from the macro breweries that also ignore taste/quality?

  6. I am thinking of the phrase “niche market” as I read these, Stan. It is clear to me that there is always an opportunity to aim at an untapped (literally in this case) market and move towards it. I am also concerned about saying that “X” didn’t happen back in the day without some documentation.

    I have no doubt that there was not the marketing plan or the spin doctors as you say but I also have a feeling that there was talk of “if we can pull this off and put good beer in front of people and make it interesting to them through promotion, well, years from now they will blog about it… whatever blogging is.” That is marketing as well.

  7. No arguing that these breweries were established as (small) businesses, intent on making money. Which means selling beers, which means some sort of marketing (once you put a label on a bottle).

    As far as what did and did not happen back in the day that is the prime motivation behind the (neglected) Beer Oral History Project. How did Geoff and Marcy Larson settle on their first recipe at Alaskan Brewing and why did they dump the first 14 batches? Why did the brew Alaskan Smoked Porter the first time?

    Those have have tape (well, a digital recording) on – so although it might be 16 batches rather than 14 (that was off the top of my head) I have it documented. But I’ve wandered off the subject again, haven’t I? Hard to imagine.

  8. Marketing approach: isn’t that only the difference between a monopoly and an oligopoly? 😉

    Good that tapes exist but it begs the question how many batches have A-B dumped? And why didn’t early NS craft brewer Granite Brewing dump that batch back in 1986 that gave us all the scoots?

    Are craft brewers homogeneous enough and distinct enough to say that what they do in relation to marketing and other aspects of business are not comparable to other levels of scale? Or do we have great examples and not so great ones. Isn’t that true at all points in the scale of production. I am real happy these days, for example, to have a Ford. Sincerity and ethical business practices are not the exclusive right or even an entry requirement for small business including the small craft beer business.

  9. Way back to Spencer’s point, which I missed as new ones flew in.

    Seth Godin quite likes the word ‘remarkable,’ meaning a product is worth remarking about. And that become part of marketing. I am fine with marketing as long as marketers remember you can’t polish a turd.

    I should have written much clearer at the top. Barrel-aged beers, beers based on history (real history, not made up), beers with unique ingredients etc. have started with the brewer. Not from an idea that come from somebody in marketing (like Miller Clear are the “lager for women” that Molson Coors is planning in the UK).

    They are not creations of a marketing group. In fact, often they are beers the marketing department would argue can’t be sold.

    And Alan: yes, great examples and crappy ones, yes and yes.

  10. “They are not creations of a marketing group. In fact, often they are beers the marketing department would argue can’t be sold.”

    A marketing department would likely conclude a barrel aged beer could not be sold in the quantities that would justfy a mega-brewer to make. Take the revenues of the 50 most wildly successful barrel-aged brews and it probably adds up to a rounding error to the revenues Molson Coors or InBev AB earn.

    (It takes the Budweiser brewery in KC something like 16 hours to equal the annual output of KC’s Boulevard Brewing. And 70% of the output of Boulevard is their wheat beer. Their barrel-ages and other experimental brews in their Smokestack Series is a small fraction of Boulevard’s revenue. The gives some idea of the different output scales involved.)

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