There’s a semi-regular email that’s sent out across New Zealand. I’m not currently on the distribution list; I get the occasional, more outrageous one forwarded to me, so my view of the emails is a bit skewed towards the ridiculous.
The latest one, though, touched upon something I’ve thought about for a while. It spoke of idea that there are two separate beer markets – Bigbrew (people who like the fizzy yellow stuff straight from the bottle) and craft brew. The Bigbrew people were unlikely to change and the big brewers should stop targeting craft drinkers.
This is an idea I can’t quite agree with – the mass versus craft, them versus us view of the beer market. The beer market is not a dichotomy – it’s a spectrum. Yes, there are people who will only drink New Zealand/Australian Draft. Yes, there are those who will only drink the newest and most innovative micro brews. But the vast majority of people sit somewhere in between – and where they sit changes from day to day. Show me a 42C day in Melbourne and I’ll show you a fan of flavourful beer (me) drinking an ice cold Toohey’s straight from the bottle.
How do I know this? I talk to people who aren’t fully immersed in the ‘beer world’. I have non-beer friends (shock, horror, I know), I talk to my coworkers about what they had to drink at the weekend, hell I even talk to strangers in bottleshops about their selections. People will sometimes try a beer from a smaller brewer, sometimes get a slab of something terrible from Aldi, and sometimes hit the taps at the local beer spot.
Furthermore, beer itself is changing so that there’s no real demarcation line between ‘mass’ and ‘craft’ – mostly because the latter term is largely made up and applied whenever people want to sell beer. It’s going the way of ‘natural’. What do we do when a brewery like Emerson’s or Little Creatures is bought up, expands, but still produces drinkable and interesting beers? What do we call these? And the people who favour their brews?
The email also showed the conversion to craft beer as a singular, one-way trip. Again, this probably happens for some people, but not, I would expect, for the vast majority. Why? Because people often try a beer they don’t like – say a wheat beer – go back to more mass-produced offerings, try a different beer – maybe a pale ale – and decided maybe to try more of them.
The author of the email, of course, isn’t the only person with these views and I mean no disrespect to him personally. I just don’t see the ‘them-us’ mentality as being very useful. Beer is not just black or white – and neither is the market that consumes it.
July 10, 2015 at 12:18 pm
I presume you are Australian? My beer market article accompanying the two weekly Beermark reviews is targeted mainly at NZ at present, noting that NZ has a very different beer market to OZ. This is the second in a series and is based on what I see here in the marketplace, on the street and on twitter. The Beermark is sent on the understanding that it is not for publication or re-distribution and is to the trade only. I am a marketing professional not a journalist so these are based on a marketer’s view at a business level. If you are genuinely in the beer trade and not a journalist, I can put you on my mail list but would appreciate that you do not publish whole or part of my articles.
July 11, 2015 at 10:25 am
Hi Mark,
Apologies, I didn’t realise the contents of the email weren’t for publication or re-distribution – I have removed the quoted paragraphs from this post.
I am a New Zealander who has been living in Australia for a couple of years. Yes the markets are different – New Zealand’s probably a year or two ahead – but they share many common themes, which may even outweigh their differences.
Can journalists not be genuinely involved in the beer trade?
July 13, 2015 at 7:52 am
Hi Mark,
Kate was blogging in New Zealand (and working in the industry) since… quite a while ago. We didn’t shun her just because she moved to Aussie! 🙂 She’s still very much “one of us”.
Now, I’d like to address your comment that “Beermark is sent on the understanding that it is not for publication or re-distribution and is to the trade only”.
As someone who receives it, I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t sign up for it, and as a result, there can be no contract. We can effectively do what we like with it.
As for being a marketing professional, I’m sorry, but again I’ll be blunt. Some of the content of your emails is far from professional. Some of the comments you make about beers comes across as extremely uneducated, and frankly, I’d be embarrassed to put that out there as a professional were I in your shoes. I’ve remained “subscribed” (if it can be called that, given I was simply spammed with no option) out of the train-wreck-effect really, just to see what will happen next!
Finally, and still on the topic of professionalism, I think that as an industry, we have moved past the need to constantly slag off the large players. It’s childish, petty, and given sales growth of flavourful beer, utterly unnecessary.
I honestly wish you all the best, but I just find your response to this frustrating. Instead of addressing the issues raised in an interesting and thoughtful piece, you effectively attempt to just shut it down. We’re generally a friendly and lighthearted bunch in the NZ beer community, but sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade, and Mark, you’re being a total soil transfer implement! 😉
Cheers,
Greig McGill
July 23, 2015 at 3:57 pm
wait…. the Beermark “newsletter” isn’t satire?