{"id":16039,"date":"2020-08-24T03:42:48","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T09:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=16039"},"modified":"2020-08-24T03:44:11","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T09:44:11","slug":"hipsters-hobnobbing-and-the-exclusive-inclusive-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/hipsters-hobnobbing-and-the-exclusive-inclusive-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"Hipsters, hobnobbing and the exclusive-inclusive divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Footsteps
\na) Last week, Brews News in Australia highlighted a report<\/a> that suggested \u201cthe positioning of many craft beers to target \u2018purists\u2019 and \u2018hipsters\u2019 gave the independent brewers less traction with a sizeable part of the Australian market.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is that mainstream breweries have created a class of \u201ccontemporary beers\u201d that are priced between budget beers and premium beers. They appeal to \u201cconsumers tiring of traditional beer brand offerings but \u2018who felt disenfranchised by the craft movement.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

b) With that in mind, look at what Mike Urich wrote in his Seven Point Analytic blog<\/a> last month. Really nice visuals illustrate that, \u201cLow income drinkers have exactly one entry point into beer, and it\u2019s pale\/light lager. We\u2019re hardly offering new and low income drinkers a lot of options.\u201d<\/p>\n

He contrasts that to spirits, where every segment has significant pricing overlap. \u201cThe average price of whiskey, gin, and tequila are each above the average price of vodka, but there are still plenty of options in every segment at essentially every price point. This allows drinkers of every income level an entry point into any spirits segment that they want to try. From there, they can go wherever they want\u2014there\u2019s a cheap, widely available spirits brand in every segment for every drinker.\u201d<\/p>\n

c) In 1998, The New Brewer<\/em> included an article about \u201cThe Demographics of the Micro Market.\u201d It reported the results of the National Beer Survey, which was sponsored in part by the Institute of Brewing Studies (a forerunner of the Brewers Association).
\n<\/p>\n

(One quick aside, the NBS compiled a list of the styles \u201cmicro fans\u201d preferred. In order, they were amber, stout, wheat, Christmas ale, IPA, Belgian, dobblebock, barleywine.)<\/p>\n

The national survey found that education was a large factor determining if drinkers chose \u201cmicro\u201d beers, \u201cvarying from only 8 percent usage for those not finishing high school to over 40 percent for college graduates, with middle education categories progressively in the middle.\u201d John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who wrote the article, added, \u201cAs in so many other areas of life, one\u2019s education reflects taste and a concern with taste.\u201d And later, \u201cThe important bottom line here is that one should not be confused by the fact that micro drinkers are more affluent. That money difference is just an education difference in disguise. Market to education, not income.\u201d <\/p>\n

d) That was 1998, but how much has changed? In the mid-aughts an article in The New Brewer<\/em> focused on the concept of \u201ctrading up\u201d (confession: I wrote it) featured in the book \u201cTrading Up: The New American luxury.\u201d Boston Beer was among the companies featured, and soon after the book got attention many brewers began to describe what they made as a \u201cnew luxury.\u201d<\/p>\n

That story includes an exchange between two Philadelphia Inquirer writers in 1985. Food editor Gerry Etter wrote, \u201cToday, beer is invited everywhere. It hobnobs with vintage wines and attends formal parties, it slides effervescently into crystal glasses held by long-gowned hostesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second writer countered, \u201cI\u2019ve never hobnobbed in my life (and if I did, it was only once and with a consenting adult), and I don\u2019t intend to start now. One doesn\u2019t hobnob while drinking beer, one shoots the bull.\u201d Translation: beer should be a blue-collar beverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrading Up\u201d proposed that these blue collar workers would pay a disproportionate amount of their income for products that are important to them. This was labeled \u201crocketing.\u201d Very important was the idea of marketing as education<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Marketing to education<\/em> was not, and is not, the same as marketing as education<\/em>. <\/p>\n

All of the above are about both the business of selling beer and the value of being inclusive. Funny how that works out, and leads directly to words from Dr. J Nikol Jackson-Beckham<\/a>. <\/p>\n

e) \u201cLest any business owners still have reservations about the urgency of creating a more equitable beer industry, know that working towards inclusivity is not just a moral imperative\u2014it\u2019s a financial one, too<\/a>. Ignoring this reality isn\u2019t just ethically bankrupt; it may well be bankrupting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

a) Last week, Brews News in Australia highlighted a report that suggested \u201cthe positioning of many craft beers to target \u2018purists\u2019 and \u2018hipsters\u2019 gave the independent brewers less traction with a sizeable part of the Australian market.\u201d The result is that mainstream breweries have created a class of \u201ccontemporary beers\u201d that are priced between budget … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-4aH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16039"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16046,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16039\/revisions\/16046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}