Before I get started I should state that the first ever beer week in Canada, Vancouver Craft Beer Week, saw many forms of promotion, not just social media. That said, the amazing success of VCBW would have not been possible without a strong following generated via Twitter, Facebook, and a ton of honest hard work. None of the media partners, newspapers articles, blog posts, radio coverage, and sponsors would have shown interest in VCBW without showing strong social media numbers in the early going. After establishing VCBW through these channels we were able to leverage all forms of marketing as a final push; however, at that time over half of the ticketed events were already sold out and the week could have been considered a success even without these tools. In the end VCBW was a staggering success, accomplishing in its first year what many events of it size take upwards of five years to achieve.
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In one of the most embarrassing craft beer related lawsuits since the Vermonster debacle, our friends down at Bear Republic Brewery have filed a trademark infringement order against Central City Brewing, who are located here in British Columbia. Before getting into my dissection of this lawsuit I do wish to fully disclose that I know the people behind Central City Brewing, and am a fan of their beers. For a detailed breakdown of the lawsuit you can download the filed document here.
Above is a picture of both trademarkst. It’s true that arguments about both fonts and naming can be made. However, when using standard fonts found on almost any computer you can easily make the counter argument of coincidence. As for the names, it’s a stretch to assume Red Racer and Racer 5 have any significant relationship when compared to most craft beers. The sheer number of breweries using colors as denominators for their products is daunting, and the term Racer is vague; so much so one could argue AlesSmith’s Speedway Stout could also fall into this lawsuit if that were the case. Aside from this there is the blatant copyright infringement Bear Republic has done on their own part, creating a brand based off of the Speed Racer cartoon and its ever so famous car the Mach 5.
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All too often, lovers of craft beer are looked at in a negative way. The opinions vary; however, most commonly we are looked at as geeks, snobs, or neanderthals depending on who you ask. If we are going to go forward as a community, we need to do our best to dispel these myths and showcase our passion appropriately. I know many of you may take the approach that image doesn’t matter and that passion is all that counts; although there is some merit to that, one can never discount the effect of presentation.
Take for example, a recent business meeting I attended. One of the presenters is an utter genius and had a fantastic product, yet due to his unpolished presentation he came off as confused and rambling. Until he gets this end of his business dealt with, I feel he is going to have a lot more difficulty getting people to buy into him than he should get based on his merits.
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Nano-Brewing is not exactly a new concept. That said, I don’t think that enough of us hop-heads are aware of the latest revolution in brewing. When trying to start a business, there is nothing wrong with starting small and growing organically. I think a lot of people out there look at starting their own brewery or brew pub and go “wow, there is no way I can afford to get into this.” Although by no means cheap, starting a nano-brewery could be the way to go if you are looking to make and sell beer.
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Recently, the Russell Brewing Company signed a five year sponsorship deal with the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre, home of the Abbotsford Heat. You can read the full release here. This is not a particularly unusual occurrence but it got me thinking about how many breweries miss opportunities like this. If you’ve read the truecask.com About page, then you know my background is marketing, and although I have designs to do some consulting work for the industry, I also know that withholding information is not going to help me achieve the mission objective I state on that exact same About page. As a result I have decided to post my marketing musings for those in the industry to digest, refute, and possibly execute.
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Since the Great Canadian Beer Festival things have been somewhat quiet here on truecask.com. Trust me when I say that this is for good reason. That day marks what might become either an enormous paradigm shift in the BC beer scene, or a small blip on the craft radar. At this point it’s hard say what the result will be; however, you’ll be able to track the progress on the way to the end result as I will be documenting the process.
So what the hell am I talking about anyway? Obviously, during the course of this blogging adventure, I have associated myself with not only a ton of craft beer fans, but also some very knowledgeable industry people. Through this network, a collection of us have formed in order to develop possibly the most ‘core’ craft brewery north of the border, or at least thats the goal.
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All across the internet, articles like this one from The Business Edition have been popping up reporting how America’s biggest breweries, MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch, will be raising prices. One can only imagine that the rest of the macro-breweries will follow suit, as this is clearly in response to the fact that sales of macro-beers keep dropping while micro-beer sales are on the rise.
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Before you click the back button and never return to truecask.com for stating such blasphemy, please hear me out. Coors is known for making fizzy yellow beer and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing. Perhaps we should reconsider this assessment, dropping the latter and leaving ‘Coors is known for making fizzy yellow beer’.
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What starts off sounding like a rather personal question is actually becoming an issue for beer lovers in British Columbia. This past weekend the Vancouver Sun reported on how there is no such thing as a true pint in our province. Although this is a substantial issue, it’s just a small part of the beer drinker’s pain here in British Columbia.
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I recently stated on Twitter that I thought Granville Island Brewery was becoming less craft friendly and that it was good to see them sponsoring CAMRA Vancouver. Some people came to their defense, including their own twitter account. Due to their willingness to interact with their community, and critics, I decided I should further research my opinion and see if it was valid. What I found was encouraging. It turns out they are members of the BC Craft Brewers Association, continue to produce limited release brews, and were the first micro brewery in Canada. Although I was aware of some of these facts I feel my opinion had become skewed due to what I believe is an uninspired catalog of everyday beers. Why I bring this up is because it posed an interesting question. When is a brewery no longer craft?
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Before I get started I should state that the first ever beer week in Canada, Vancouver Craft Beer Week, saw many forms of promotion, not just social media. That said, the amazing success of VCBW would have not been possible without a strong following generated via Twitter, Facebook, and a ton of honest hard work. None of the media partners, newspapers articles, blog posts, radio coverage, and sponsors would have shown interest in VCBW without showing strong social media numbers in the early going. After establishing VCBW through these channels we were able to leverage all forms of marketing as a final push; however, at that time over half of the ticketed events were already sold out and the week could have been considered a success even without these tools. In the end VCBW was a staggering success, accomplishing in its first year what many events of it size take upwards of five years to achieve.
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