Few businesses have so thoroughly tested the theory that all publicity is good publicity than BrewDog. From the start it sought to annoy peers in the beer industry, taking shots at “global beer mega corporations” and dobbing itself in to regulators so that it could complain about oppressive rules.
Not all controversies have been intentional. Not content with the criticism it received over marketing hypocrisy and difficult working conditions for staff, in the past week BrewDog announced it will not be paying new staff the new ‘living wage’, which campaigners argue is necessary for a decent standard of living.
This comes amid the rolling (if somewhat abating) cost-of-living crisis. The fact that people are still struggling for money has been been noted both by CEO James Watt as a imperative in keeping beer prices down for punters, and by union men who call the restraint on wages “outrageous”.
Watt is not the only uber-pub landlord facing criticism of late. Late in December, the government announced that Tim Martin, boss of the JD Wetherspoon pub group, would be getting a knighthood for services to hospitality and culture.
Martin is widely disliked because he is king of the gammons. His pubs are (somewhat unfairly) reputed for catering mostly to ruddy-faced working men who voted for Brexit, in part because Martin was a big backer of leaving the EU, even touring his own extensive pub estate making speeches.
Yet unlike Watt, Martin has no shortage of defenders in the conservative press. Most credit him with keeping pubs accessible to a wide range of customers, from students to pensioners, as can be seen in a recent Substack post from Tom Jones:
“They are favoured for one thing above all else; their prices. Taking in a pint there can cost half as much as other pubs, even in comparable chains. As successive governments have tried to price us out of our drinking habit, Wetherspoons stands athwart public health nannying shouting; stop!”
By comparison, apologists for Watt seem confined to the comments section below his LinkedIn musings. Cornerned as a kind of Elon Musk of craft beer – both are ‘bros’ accused of trying too hard while being male and possibly autistic – he is a favourite whipping boy of the press, including… er… me.
Much of the criticism is deserved. Clearly many of BrewDog’s marketing stunts were phoney and some of the working conditions could be better (although I will note some of the innuendos in the BBC documentary about Watt being creepy were bemusingly thin).
The beer is also mostly good rather than amazing. You can usually do better than BrewDog’s beer just by finding whatever your nearest local brewery is, because fresh beer is better beer.
Yet Watt and his business partner and chief brewer Martin Dickie are the reason you can walk into a decent-sized supermarket and buy beer that isn’t fake continental lager, real ale or Guinness. Without their efforts in making craft beer mainstream, you could not enter a normal pub and pick up a pale ale from the likes of Beavertown.
That means they’ve saved many a punter from the glorified fizzy water that passes for beer in most pubs. The depth of mainstream lager’s insipidness is matched only by the breadth of its consumption. While you can argue all is equal from the fifth pint, at least for the first two it’s nice to drink something that isn’t interchangeable with what goes into the urinals.
It’s why, contra some Twitter critics, I am Team BrewDog. Not because I’m anti-Spoons or a proponent of Punk IPA, but because without the Scottish brewer it would be harder to drink tasty beer. The rest, whether from BrewDog or its critics, is just so much marketing.