Tag: hipsters

Some advice to Budweiser about next year’s Super Bowl ad

Posted on by Ben

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In case you missed it, last night during the Super Bowl, Budweiser opted to double down on a marketing strategy that sets its sights squarely on making craft beer seem like the drink of pansies.

Last year during the Super Bowl we learned that Budweiser is “brewed the hard way,” and this year, via galloping, muscular Clydesdales and manly men doing the hard work of brewing Bud, they proudly proclaimed they were “not backing down.”

This is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that last year’s ad (which to my mind better “pansified” craft beer than this year’s) was so roundly ridiculed in the days that followed Super Bowl 49 that it’s shocking to see the tact repeated this year, albeit less effectively. It’s also amusing to note (as others have and will again) that AB-InBev attacking craft beer (again) is profoundly hypocritical given that the strategy is paired with one that has seen them buying up said pansy craft breweries in the last few years. Continue reading “Some advice to Budweiser about next year’s Super Bowl ad” →

Budweiser is now officially marketing to people who already drink Budweiser

Posted on by Ben

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Yesterday, Budweiser released the commercial below. In it, the marketing giant who also happens to sell beer successfully continues their new advertising strategy, which is seemingly an effort to troll hipsters; a strategy that they unofficially launched with their now infamous Super Bowl ad that featured bearded scenesters sniffing mutli-coloured beer flights in small glasses and positioning them as diametrically opposed to people who drink “real beer” “made the hard way.”

This new ad is aimed once again squarely at the hipster set (whom they identify without ever saying the word hipster, only by stating their setting: Brooklyn, a word that probably serves pretty handily as a short hand signifier of “all things pretentious and effeminate” to any macro-drinking, flag waving, fly-over-state-dwelling “real person”). In it, they set up a fake bar, put an actor into some hipster clothing (i.e. plaid), and have said pseudo-cool-guy serve unwitting hipsters some ice cold Budweiser.

The stage is set for an epic burn!

But does it work? I don’t think so.

Presumably the folks at the ad agency Budweiser hired to make this farce will think this campaign is a success owing to what I imagine will be high numbers in the only currency that matters these days, traffic, but it’s hard to view this ad with anything close to a critical eye and not see it as a failure, for a couple reasons. Continue reading “Budweiser is now officially marketing to people who already drink Budweiser” →

Why are you still drinking shitty beer?

Posted on by Ben

Not so long ago, I started writing about beer on a regular basis.

Initially my involvement with beer was a pretty casual affair, allowing me to pair two things I’ve always loved; drinking and writing.

Though after a few months writing about beer, meeting with local brewers, attending beer events, and drinking great beer, it became clear I was becoming a little obsessed with beer.

These days I spend a considerable amount of my time reading about, talking about, writing about, and of course drinking, beer and it’s my hope this obsession will soon expand into the world of making beer–but more on that later.

So while I currently cover general beer happenings for the Toronto-centric blogTO, I thought it was high time I had my own place to collect my thoughts on all things beer and document the sure-to-be-messy process of learning how to make my own.

And so, given that I have this new forum, I thought I’d use my inaugural post to pose a question to the city’s beer drinkers: Why are you still drinking shitty beer?

Continue reading “Why are you still drinking shitty beer?” →