I’m Sorry

Only in acknowledging our mistakes and apologising for the harm they have caused can we move forward.

As an Olympic weightlifter blessed with a sturdy physique I’m better equipped than many to shoulder the weight of a multitude of sins, so on behalf of the information industry I’d like to offer a heartfelt apology: “I’m sorry.”

Having worked both in product marketing and journalism, I believe both professions, for different reasons, have let consumers down when it comes to misrepresenting the beers we love.

These are just some of the mistruths promulgated over the years:

• Lager is light
• Ale is Dark
• Low carbohydrate beer will help me lose weight
• Low alcohol beer will help me lose weight
• Spring water is an integral ingredient of fruit wine

How have we let you down?

Let’s deal first with journalists. They have a professional obligation to provide contrasting viewpoints and information to allow an intelligent reader to make their own decisions based on the balanced case presented to them.

Sounds great but in real life that’s the kind of idealism that can lead you astray.

All too often it puts crackpot theories on a level footing with proven facts; enter some lazy thinking and a lack of any independent research and hey presto the moon being made of green cheese lines up against the barren rock theory as being of equal likelihood.

Modern marketing suffers from no such lofty ambitions.

In the beginning, when business was a new science and marketing was its buzzword – marketing did purportedly have you, the consumer, at its avaricious heart.

Marketers would sidle up to consumers to discover what they really needed but couldn’t get (they called that identifying a gap in the market); then they would produce the product or service that consumers really wanted (cornering the market); then they would communicate to consumers that they had the answer.

That’s the theory anyway.

Somewhere along the way the avaricious heart got blacker and things got shortened up a bit; the second step got skipped altogether and a “let’s not, and say we did” style of marketing emerged, which sounds suspiciously like the good old fashioned sales that pre-dated it.

Remove the innovation and lead-in time needed to “corner a market” and you’ve got a simpler game that anyone can play. The objective is gaining “market share”; where consumers are pawns in any-thing goes territorial battles played out by brands offering commodity products.

Sound familiar?

Consumers wanted choice so breweries provided it – usually in the form of different labels on generic products. (And who hasn’t played the switch-the-label on their brand-loyal draught and European style lager friends, the more idiotically brand loyal, the greater the fun).

Sadly most consumers never even realise how manipulated their decisions are.

My revelation came while visiting a friend in Australia – of similar age, with similar interests and hobbies – yet diametrically opposed lifestyles and genetic makeup. The beer labels in the fridge were different but her Sydney bathroom showcased all the products of mine in Invercargill. Chilling evidence indeed of the strength of market profiling.

While the craft industry has emerged like a monolithic stone in 2001: A Space Odyssey promising a better future it’s not all sweetness and light in this new beer garden.

The big breweries have responded with an old tactic – pseudo craft offering new labels on the same beer – while some fresh young things have emulated the fast and loose claims of the anything goes mentality, and when products are genuinely different it’s more important than ever that labels and product information accurately represent the contents.

This is an issue far broader than beer.

The industry finally overplayed its hand, causing the central Government to wade in with a law change, which bans producers from making claims on labels or advertisements unless they can prove them to be true.

Yep, there’s now a law against telling lies.

From 17 June 2014, businesses and individuals found to have made ‘unsubstantiated representations’ under the Fair Trading Act are liable to be fined up to $600,000 and $200,000 respectively.

Let’s call an IPA an IPA.
A black IPA a Hoppy Porter
A Swedish cider an RTD

And while the industry attends to that, consumers too have an important part to play in keeping it honest, look behind the mindless rhetoric and half claims and demand it finish its sentences.

30% more than what?
100% Pure what?

Finally, when journalism with its sense of fair play and freedom of speech isn’t equipped to counter vested interest marketing where should we turn for truth? For fearless contemporary social commentary I reckon you can’t beat stand-up comedy.