Remember that kid we all went to school with? You know the one; the chubby kid with the uniform that didn’t quite fit, always had one shoelace undone and smelled ever so slightly of cheese? He wasn’t a bad kid and your Mums were friends and you got an invite to his birthday party – but you and your mates tolerated him and he was always ‘one of the boys’. He was a genuine kid, a bit awkward and embarrassing but ‘one of the boys’.
Then there was that other kid who thought he was just way too cool for you and your mates. His tastes were more mature and his record collection was more sophisticated. He had older brothers and got more pocket money and never had to run a paper round or sweep the butcher shop floor. But he needed friends so he still wanted to be in your crowd and would hang around as if he were one of you while never really wanting to be seen to be one of you.
When it suited him he’d join in your conversations, agree with your predictions for the coming footy season and even side with you over who would win a fight between Batman and Superman (Superman, of course, although Bruce Wayne may have access to Kryptonite). But, behind your back, he’d tell the other mob that you were ugly and your Mum dressed you funny.
It’s possible that kid grew up to become a marketing executive with a large brewing company. It’s also possible he had something to do with the Crafty Beggars. I was about to say; “the Crafty Beggars brewery/brewers/beer people”, but I’m not sure that that in itself would be untruthful. Because what brewer would shit in his own nest? What true artist of the brewing craft would sell beer by telling you how bad everybody else’s beer is rather than how good theirs is? Could a brewer really hope to achieve any credibility claiming to belong to a club and then throw rocks at the clubhouse?
According to their own marketing bull, The Crafty Beggars are “nine rogue brewers” “of unsurpassed skill and fanaticism” “hidden deep within the industry” who want to “make a craft beer you can actually drink” one that is not “so snobbily crafty that one overpriced sip will blow your face off in a blitzkrieg of hops and whatever else has been arbitrarily thrown in”. Sign me up for a years’ subscription to that beer! I HATE FLAVOUR!!! YAY!!!
What they really are is a room full of people with degrees in Marketing and Half-Arse-ery 101 who work for a big brewer and perhaps don’t realise that the company has a brewing division. Crafty Beggars is Lion. As in the same multi-national conglomerate who have recently bought Little Creatures and Emerson’s. We presume they will soon ensure that these ‘so-called craft brewers’ start making beers we can actually drink in preference to the flavoursome and refreshing and award-winning beers they have crafted til now.
Much about The Crafty Beggars has already been written by wordsmiths far more erudite than I so I’ll let you read Phil Cook’s piece here and Neil Miller’s here as well as reaction from the trade and the NZ Brewing fraternity here. You can decide for yourself whether this is the way of the world or another example of somebody cynically seeing an opening in the market and wanting to play in the same clubhouse that they want to throw rocks at.
Maybe this is simply an example of going where the gettin’s good (the only growth sector of the beer market) and a somewhat sad case of being friends when it suits some people. Like that kid from school.
I think I’d like to share my friendship with the chubby awkward kid. At least he was honest and loyal.
Join the conversation – is Crafty Beggars just clever tongue-in-cheek marketing or proof that some marketing types can sell anything from toothbrushes and toilet paper to iPads and IPAs as long as they are not required to actually drink/use/try the stuff they are marketing?
Craft beer, craft brewing are terms with value that has been built up by mainly small breweries over time. A lot of us have varying ideas about what craft beer means, but even SAB Miller realises the value that “craft” brings to the beers they sell under that umbrella.
What really perplexes me about Crafty Beggars is that their very name implies they understand the value of this term in their marketing of the beer. Yet you don’t have to dig down very far in their advertising to find them undermining and de-valueing the same thing.
Prof., you have summed it up quite well here.
They called it crafty beggers because Crafty C*nt was already taken. Jerks from marketing and design firms. Lion is too lazy to even bother to craft this crap by themselves.
yeah bloody well said, theres tripe out there, you dont have to eat it, but people still do, get some tripe in ya! and wash it down with a crafty beggar! gives toothless beggars a bad name
Australian and New Zealand “craft” breweries that really believe they are Craft – hard working, quality focused, independent with real breweries that make beer themselves and flavorsome beer , whatever the style – must talk more to beer drinkers. They must let them know drinkers are getting conned by psycho marketers working in big business pretending.
Real craft breweries offer a better beer. Don’t let them (the big boys) get away with this sort of fantasy trashy beer brand story. Importantly, don’t sit back and say nothing. For example, when will someone set up a website that details real beers by the brewery making them in Australia versus fake beers versus contract beers?
Australia and New Zealand have great craft breweries of all sizes and backgrounds. It is unacceptable these few big guys get a voice at all. But smaller craft breweries need to respond back with better product and a clear position on the subject and not turn the cheek. There is a huge opportunity for real craft breweries to compete against this fake trashy beer system now out of control in NZ and Australia.
Why is it not such big issue in other countries? Have consumers totally given up on beer here or are we a wine nations only, now rapidly becoming cider cities.
I think there is hope for real craft beer brewed in Australia. It starts with a view that Lion and CUB should not consider themselves the preservers of the brewing past or future. They are not friends of craft breweries or beer drinkers. They are competitors. They are non craft beer participants. Absolute enemies of the craft beer state.
I have long held this view and their new brands prove this. I repeat again, THEY ARE CRAFT BEER ENEMIES. And they confirm this in their marketing. So why do so many Craft breweries invite them into the family? I don’t get this.
They have built very very few breweries and just shut down breweries or brand banked. Even their new brand building is largely a failure as these new “anti craft drinker ” brands will prove. The concept is so childish – very very professional. As a CEO, l would sack the brand manager if it happened in my business.
“They” – the corporates in the big breweries – not the brewers or long standing employees and professionals in the brewing industry- are the problem. “They” are the controllers of boards and the share price. They are responsible for the decline in beer by more than 15% in the past 14 years and they have created via bad beer and low margin, low hope and the need for supermarkets in Australia to launch private label beers- 30 years ahead of the USA and even before craft beer in Australia has got off the starting block.
I hold the view that the “Australian beer problem” started with the merger of breweries that became CUB. This is just my personal view. The merger might have saved a handful of breweries back then, but it also lay the seed to the current problems today. A board mentality set in and beer was dumbed down and consumer taste controlled with the gradual manipulation of consumer choice of brands/taste. Innovation died in terms of flavor and in fact, the only innovation of any substance occurred in the 1950’s when mass beer brewing science was at its best – Mc Donaldization of beer flavor truly set in with the abuse of brewing science i.e., faster ferments and conditioning, more sugar, more sugar, more sugar. Ales became lagers and lagers became……? A smaller burst of brewing science in the early 1970’s ensured labs kept bugs out better than before as bottling got faster and faster.
The great hope – craft beer- made a brief appearance in the 1980’s with return of real hops, and all malt beers but failed because of the same pattern – board room intervention and debt on debt business culture/mergers/buyouts. Only one family brewery survived- Coopers.
Now it is potentially different times. We must go back to the past to move forward. Way back. 1800’s. Go local.
But Social media will change a lot of the old rules. Most consumers really are not that stupid and want authenticity. They know boards and Directors are chasing bonus targets. Consumers want an honest beer. An honest product. One not managed by big boards. Politicians.
New craft breweries hopefully will put in place food grade systems and consistent quality and balanced flavor with little contamination will emerge. Modern marketing. And seriously compete. As beer.
We need to live with the current excise tax system and not expect favors from governments. It would be great if breweries could get a beer producer rebate but this should not be money sought to benefit anyone but the smallest 100% private breweries that show talent and deserve the money. It would be great if local government made it easier to get liquor licenses without the huge tribunal expenses we have incurred to argue against a tiny minority objectors who hate liquor no matter what.
Throwing them ( Lion Nathan and their brands as well as CUB ) out of Craft Brewing Association would be a good start , then other real craft breweries might join and breweries will not live under the shadow of the bad behavior we can all see now very clearly.
The guys and gals making “beer label brands” with obvious passion, must not be afraid to set up real breweries. The American small to medium craft brewery industry is mostly not built on contract breweries. There might be a small place for it in Australia , but its not brewing. It’s trading. Unless you own the brewery shares, the keys and the process, its not brewing. There are no short cuts and you can’t brew great beer without good equipment and commitment to the cause of BREWING . If everyone were to contract brew, private label will replace contract brewed beers. So please start brewing not fudging it. This will help everyone compete with big breweries.
Real brewing means owning the means of production and managing the entire process yourself. It is hard but worthwhile. It’s fun to do it 100% yourself. The beer is real and so are you.
Yes, anyone who starts a brewery with their own money, no matter how big or small,is a risk taker. The chances of failure is higher than most industries. But you only live once. If you go down, just make sure its your own money not other peoples money.
If you really really love being in brewing, do it. There are sacrifices and you may be quite old before you get the financial reward. That’s part of brewing history reality. But if you start a brewery, the drinker will not want to know about the 9 fake brewers Lion Nathan’s wanker brand.
Death without a real and decent beer in hand is a sure way to hell. And we are all bound for hell if these crackerjacks in boardrooms keep coming out with these dumb insulting beer projects labelled as craft beer while spitting in your face.
Ever thought that this beer might just be a modern day mainstream beer. I love craft beer, but I am a 56 male. Us craft lovers drink our craft beers like wine, which I know my son hates. He can’t drink my Emmersons with me, but he doesnt want to drink Lion Red or some other brown beer ale. It is probably aimmed at 18-25 who look at us craft lovers like we a fruit cakes.
True, but making a mainstream beer and simply misappropriating the ‘craft’ tag for marketing purposes is dishonest isn’t it?
True, but if I put my marketing hat on here I would assume that is what kids 18-25 would like. A brand that just breaks the laws, does what it wants, offends whoever it likes seems just like that generation so the brand probably fits
Again true, but it just shows them to be marketers who will say anything to be popular…which when the same people are trying to sell other, more credible brands, undermines their efforts and goes a long way to explaining why people are shifting away from the multinational brewers, which is why they are so desperately trying to not look like multinational brewers, which is why people are coming to dislike multinational brewers, which is why…
Good god, when did it become admirable to be able to give it but not take it?
Craft brewers constantly and proudly shitcan anything and everything made by big brewers. Apparently the behavior is just fine so long its a craft brewer with their pants around their ankles a superior grin on their face – but a speck of dirt happens to come back the other way and oh my god the gnashing of teeth and tearing of clothes……
Take a concrete pill craft brewers of Aus/NZ – the weeping and moaning thats been emanating from your table of late is distracting me from my beer.
Here’s an idea – Make better beer than the Mega Brewers and then sell it… try not to cry to much if they fail to immediately shut up shop because they feel guilty about continuing their business when the moral superiority of your products is so blindingly obvious.
I can see the point you’re making Dan, but this isn’t a case of shit canning craft beer and craft brewers not being able to take it, this is a case of, in the face of a declining market that has been largely of their own creation, a large brewer saying we’re going to continue putting out fairly generic dross but make people fee better by telling them it’s the good stuff. If low-carb beer is a beer designed to make people feel better about not changing their drinking behaviour, Crafty Beggars is cleverly positioned to make people feel more discerning by being ‘craft beer’ while not actually being much different from their usual beer. It’s the Crown Lager of craft beers. And that’s cool too, if that’s what people want. Just not sure that pointing the fact out represents not being able to take it…
This is not about being thin-skinned. This is about a community of brewers trying to create a segment of the market for discerning and thoughtful drinkers. Brewers who have worked hard and made sacrifices to brew a product honestly and with respect to its history and tradtions. They make beer with the intention of pleasing the drinker – not the bean-counters and the shareholders first and foremost.
There is plenty of ‘Big Beer’ for those who want a cosy and bland familiarity, a link with what their old man drank or for those who seek to dull the senses and create an alternative reality if only temporarily. It’s a bit like a small local restaurant vs McDonald’s. The lines of demarcation are clear. But when Macca’s starts de-constructing their Big Mac, serving it on a plate and calling it Le Beouf de Pane and then sell it without disclosing its true origins because more and more people want that sort of offering – we have an issue.
Craft brewers have been promoting their product as an alternative to ‘macro-swill’ Big Beer’, ‘Fizzy yellow stuff’ and more – that’s stating a considered opinion and they happily take on the retorts. What they are not doing is pretending to be what they are clearly NOT.