and bullshit[/caption]Back in January of this year, PR week posted an article stating that the Global Brewers Initiative was seeking a media agency to handle it's £3 million account. Let there be beer was developed by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R for Anheuser-Busch Inbev, Molson Coors and Budweiser Budvar UK working alongside the British Beer & Pub Association in a group also known as the Global Brewers Initiative. Add CAMERA to that mix and you've got yourself an explosive combination of crap.
"The initiative aims to improve the public’s opinion of beer and revive the sector."
Which sounds all lovely rose buds and rainbows, helping hands of the system and what not, but in reality land that £3 million investment needs to have a direct turn around to the investors pockets. Don't expect this to be a fair game. Let there be beer.com is aiming to move potential beer lovers back into their flock by making the beers they sling into something more classy.
Where is this bs coming from?!
Pete Brown gave a great breakdown of Let there be beer's history and states: "Whatever else happens, whatever criticisms I have, this is a bloody wonderful thing that I wholeheartedly endorse and hope everyone else will too."
But even Mr. Pete Brown goes on to (so effing eloquently) express how the promised three year campaign is already cutting corners and turning the whole show into a lager fest.
He had huge mouthfuls to spit at the short commercials BEFORE he saw the full videos! (Read the article.) We can only imagine what rants he could put out at this point of the rally. He might have enough material for his next book.
"It's about pushing the entire category of beer," they say. Pushing the entire category of commercial beers and pushing them down the same ol' hack saw direction those shit head corporate nuts have always pushed it- down the gaping maws of unsuspecting and un-beer-educated consumers. At least when the marketing involved big fake-tittied models, there was something pleasing to look at and not this posh poser man propped up in front of the camera being paid to tell me that he knows best.
Let There Be Beer- do the creep
The Let there be beer campaign was brought to my attention after my comedic interest in Likely Moose's Looke blog profile and happened across his most recent post at the time.
When I initially wrote about the campaign back in July, I expressed my reservations about CAMERA teaming up with the brew giants to 'educate' and 'promote' the expanding beer culture.
'Let there be beer! Or let there be intoxication?' was what worried me.
"Although I admire CAMRA’s eternal quest to bring people into the beer world- I feel there might be other, possibly better, ways to promote good quality beer drinking."
I put the campaign on my youtube subscription and when the first episode popped up on my new view list, and I nearly choked on my skittles when the campy Mr. Tim Lovejoy began to rip down the beautiful lattice work of beer sophistication we in the beer culture have worked so hard to build.
There are even some points (more then a few) where Tim the host drinks the beer from the bottle- no class, Mr. Lovejoy, no class at all. Even my grandmother knows that you can't get the full sense of a brew when drank from the bottle! Might as well hold your nose closed while your drink it and time yourself, jack ass.
Completely embarrassing- watch how he does a top notice job of making shit up while he smells the bottle and sips a beer that (I bet you my collection of ninja turtle pog slammers!) he would never choose to drink when off camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY1HjVqfeWI&t=0m21s
And if that steaming pile of malt shit wasn't enough, watch as he takes two cases of commercial lager to a ripping Thai restaurant of all places and proceeds to accost people (paid people with written consent, I'm sure) while they are eating their meals. Crescendo'ing at the end with a trash piece of female representation who says that she used to like wine but that trying the Heineken has, 'changed her mind to pick beer with spicy food'. Come off it! As if she hasn't ever tried a Heineken in her adult life. These 'random' people like free shit, are willing to say anything to get said free shit and could care less about what the free shit is- as long as it is free.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6BgRf8lS-8
I'm fuming, foaming at the mouth and unable to breath for knowledge that people like the Let there be beer campaign team are breathing the same atmosphere. Huge steps backward in public beer education, giant leaps in time back to the days when beer was for men and woman drank Zima.
Even Melissa Cole, one of UK's most well known beer advocates is speaking out against the injustice in her recent blog post titled, "Let there be tears." She says:
"However, despite Lovejoy’s very professional but friendly patter, this isn’t what I was told it would be… which was limited branding from the big brewers involved, I was assured it would be an all-encompassing, carefully-executed, well-researched generic campaign – which it’s simply not and I feel really let down by that."
Let there be retaliation #Let there be better beer
This thing is just dripping with money. Think of how many children in Uganda could have clean drinking water for how much it cost to set up lighting, make-up Tom and film this piece of beer marketing devilry. Complete outrage.
Now, here is where you come in my dear friends and readers, it is now your chance to let the mass market people know that, although they cloak under good intentions, Let there be beer has nothing to do with honest beer enjoyment and education. #Lettherebebetterbeer, down vote on youtube and voice your outrage at the failings of this "beer forward" controversy via email, facebook and blog:
Let there be beer: Twitter, Facebook, YoutubePower to the beer people!
XOXOX
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