teuchter
je suis teuchter
My question was whether you'd reject the idea that that is what they are attempting to do.
BrewDog: yet another hip company using 'rebel' language to sell its stuff
- Thread starter treelover
- Start date
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
I've made my views perfectly clear.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
The billboard
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
I remember that one.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
It was, a long time ago. In fact, it started this whole wonderful thread, if you look at page 1.
Dystopiary
putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon
Cos a multinational beer company is a micro-brewery. Disingenuous creep.
billy_bob
Air of bewilderment model's own
I'm not sure there's much point continuing to debate this - we all seem to be pretty much set in our positions at this point. This is my last stab at articulating why I have such a problem with Brewdog, then I'm buggering off to get drunk on Cullercoats Shuggy Boat Blond instead.
What they're doing in this billboard is more complex and subtle than just either definitely trying to make consumers think they reject body shaming, classism and sexism or definitely pretending to want to do that while actually trying to reinforce those tropes on the sly. What it does is collapse the space between the two things, which ought to be opposite. It implies you can be both - a man who respects women and an Absolute Legend who's all wahey-tits-and-speedboats-eh-lads. The punter isn't invited to disapprove of the guy who's lounging on the yacht with supermodels and a beer or of adverts that rely on that imagery, just to feel that he has better taste than to buy into any of that.
And their whole PR self-presentation is geared to blurring these kinds of lines: we're punks, but here's equity; we're top blokes, but here's a litany of staff complaints about mistreatment; we're woke, but here's a load of nudge-nudge-wink-wink advertising that could only have been written by and for Lads. And those blurred lines in turn make it harder to call out shitty behaviour, because a good proportion of those engaging in it genuinely believe that they're Not That Type of Person. So to me, all that makes Brewdog more insidiously unpleasant than LagerCorp International selling gnat's piss like they always have and their advertising ethos more obnoxious any old-style blatant sex-sells ploy.
What they're doing in this billboard is more complex and subtle than just either definitely trying to make consumers think they reject body shaming, classism and sexism or definitely pretending to want to do that while actually trying to reinforce those tropes on the sly. What it does is collapse the space between the two things, which ought to be opposite. It implies you can be both - a man who respects women and an Absolute Legend who's all wahey-tits-and-speedboats-eh-lads. The punter isn't invited to disapprove of the guy who's lounging on the yacht with supermodels and a beer or of adverts that rely on that imagery, just to feel that he has better taste than to buy into any of that.
And their whole PR self-presentation is geared to blurring these kinds of lines: we're punks, but here's equity; we're top blokes, but here's a litany of staff complaints about mistreatment; we're woke, but here's a load of nudge-nudge-wink-wink advertising that could only have been written by and for Lads. And those blurred lines in turn make it harder to call out shitty behaviour, because a good proportion of those engaging in it genuinely believe that they're Not That Type of Person. So to me, all that makes Brewdog more insidiously unpleasant than LagerCorp International selling gnat's piss like they always have and their advertising ethos more obnoxious any old-style blatant sex-sells ploy.
billy_bob
Air of bewilderment model's own
Intentional or not, it's there.
But trust me, I know how advertising works from the inside. Almost always, they'll have gone at least as deeply as that into exactly what every word and every image they come up with denotes and connotes to every possible target group. It's rare enough for an ad to accidentally achieve an effect it wasn't aiming for that when it does happen, it tends to become advertising folk myth talked about for years afterwards - think 'You're never alone with a Strand'.
But trust me, I know how advertising works from the inside. Almost always, they'll have gone at least as deeply as that into exactly what every word and every image they come up with denotes and connotes to every possible target group. It's rare enough for an ad to accidentally achieve an effect it wasn't aiming for that when it does happen, it tends to become advertising folk myth talked about for years afterwards - think 'You're never alone with a Strand'.
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Tldr
billy_bob
Air of bewilderment model's own
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Are you really that bored?Apparently kiddy fiddling pop stars can so
This was posted pages ago (fast-moving thread! Apologies!
)But HMHB are utterly genius at pisstakes
-- I'm a big fan, but I'd never heard that one before! **Ridiculously exaggerated pisstakes, obviously!
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teuchter
je suis teuchter
Brewdog do do a kind of dual-level thing in some of their advertising. There's an element of it in much of their 'green' stuff. They do some things that might please people with a genuine concern for environmental issues - they do some actual real stuff even if it is then massively over-hyped, or perhaps not carried out in the optimal way. The massive over-hyping of it though is to some extent having a bit of a laugh about it for those that want to. So for customers that don't really care whether their beer is carbon neutral, they will enjoy the provocative campaigns that deliberately oversell the green stuff. There's a small element of nudge nudge, this is all a bit silly isn't it but we've thrown so much at it that the eco lot can't get us on this.
There was a bit of this going on with the Vegan burger thing too.
All this gets attention and fuels threads like these, because doing that dual-level thing is a great way of winding people up. And, it's tolerated by most people when it's dealing with certain subject matters but not others. Just like on urban really, there are some topics where people feel free to mess about (which still includes environmentalism stuff) and others where it's pretty much unacceptable, like racism.
However - I am pretty clear that this is not what's going on with this current campaign. The reason I am fairly clear about that is because of what the explicit subject matter is - that is, what are they openly claiming to do? They are not claiming to fight against sexist or classist stereotypes or body shaming in advertising. What the adverts are trying to do is reject cliched, scripted, fantasy lifestyle type advertising. It might be that some of that kind of advertising does employ sexist tropes and all the rest - but that's not what they are making their campaign about. The whole point of the campaign is to make out that the Brewdog customer can see through all that, and just wants straightforward decent beer. That this is the aim of the campaign is pretty clear from the wording, as well as from the other adverts aside from the billboard one that started this all off.
Because that's the fairly clear target of the message, the idea that they are presenting an explicit message rejecting something, yet at the same time doing a nudge-nudge, come on, everyone likes this really, doesn't make any sense. The nudge-nudge bit would have to be something like yeah well we all know that really we like and respond to cliched adverts that pretend a supermarket beer is somehow your key to yachts and supermodels. Who wants to be told that, or would relate to it positively?
If you see sexism, classism and body shaming in this advert it's because you're willfully reading all sorts of stuff into it and ignoring its tone.
I actually think this campaign is pretty rubbish by the way. Possibly because it seems so humourless, and takes itself so seriously, which is at odds with what they normally do.
I actually suspect it's a direction that might have been influenced by their recent PR "issues" and an instruction to tread on eggshells for now. Ironically enough. Perhaps.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Because not speaking up basically tacitly says their strategy of outdated sexist, misogynistic tropes is absolutely fine...
Spoiler alert - it really fucking isn't.
editor
hiraethified
Apparently kiddy fiddling pop stars can so
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Your posts on this thread? They certainly are, sir! Remarkable self-awareness!!
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
The company knows exactly what it's doing. As do its more vocal supporters.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Looks like Brewdog's overhaul of its employee deals has been a big success.
www.scotsman.com
More than 1,000 apply for BrewDog jobs just days after radical blueprint revealed
Scots beer maker BrewDog has received more than 1,000 job applications less than two weeks since it set out its “blueprint” for the next 15 years.
www.scotsman.com
billy_bob
Air of bewilderment model's own
Each low-skilled vacancy received an average of around 500 applications in 2021.
So whether this is a 'big success' depends rather heavily on exactly how many jobs they're not telling us were on offer, and what kind of work they were for. If they were for bar work and the like, it seems they may have had half the number of applicants any company could expect for such a role, or fewer (assuming you couldn't plausibly call it a 'variety of roles' if there were fewer than four of them).
So whether this is a 'big success' depends rather heavily on exactly how many jobs they're not telling us were on offer, and what kind of work they were for. If they were for bar work and the like, it seems they may have had half the number of applicants any company could expect for such a role, or fewer (assuming you couldn't plausibly call it a 'variety of roles' if there were fewer than four of them).
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