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06-03-2018, 17:13
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BrewDog today announced the launch of Pink IPA (https://www.brewdog.com/lowdown/blog/pink-ipa), a product identical to their standard Punk IPA except for a bright pink label, and the fact that it will be 20 per cent cheaper for women in BrewDog bars, in reference to the gender pay gap.
Satirically dubbed Beer for Girls, Pink IPA is BrewDog’s clarion call to close the gender pay gap in the UK and around the world and to expose sexist marketing to women, particularly within the beer industry.*This is our overt parody on the failed, tone-deaf campaigns that some brands have attempted in order to attract women.
The collective reaction to this, it’s probably fair to say, averages out to something like a pained groan.
Criticism ranges from suggestions of rank cynicism — they knew this would annoy people, thus generating coverage — to a sense that BrewDog (to whom the nickname BroDog has occasionally been applied) is the equivalent of “that lad from your A-level politics class who makes ‘get back in the kitchen’ jokes but it’s OK because he’s being ‘ironic’ and is actually a ‘feminist’”. (@alys_key (https://twitter.com/alys_key/status/970950708978683910)) It’s juvenile, it’s tone deaf, it’s an attempt to co-opt a serious campaign to sell beer. And so on.
Now, from our point of view, the idea itself doesn’t seem*so dreadful even if the execution is terribly clumsy. Yes, it might be time for them to admit that a very large, very successful business is not a great vehicle for social commentary or satire — the phrase, we believe, is ‘punching down’ — but we suspect this is intended sincerely, or as sincerely as a marketing stunt can ever be. We believe there are people in management at BrewDog, which remember is very much more than Watt & Dickie these days, who care about these issues and really are trying to find a way to use the company’s clout for good.
But those who are more troubled by this than us (and we don’t question their right to be) find themselves in a quandary. Do they ignore it, thus giving BrewDog a pass? Or do they call it out, thus giving BrewDog publicity?
We’ve long suspected (http://boakandbailey.com/2012/05/a-household-name/) that BrewDog’s marketing strategy is to embed itself into the minds of people outside the beer bubble because that’s the only way to make sense of some its more surprising decisions. We daresay they’d have preferred to go viral today because the reaction to this stunt was positive, but they’ll probably cope with the hurt feelings by reflecting on how they trended on Twitter,*got parodied by other monster brands (https://twitter.com/ArenaFlowers/status/970999539124637696), and were the focus of comment after comment after comment (https://twitter.com/Will_Hawkes/status/970968752669052928) in the global mainstream.
To put that another way, people might be saying, “BrewDog — what a bunch of wankers!”, but at least they’re saying BrewDog, over and over again.
Thought for the Day: Win-Win For BrewDog? (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/03/thought-day-win-win-brewdog/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)


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