I always chuckle when I read the description/mission statement of a witty blog I’ve followed throughout the years:  So That No Thought of Mine, No Matter How Stupid, Should Ever Go Unpublished Again.

This statement–that provides a laugh at the expense of the author (who is actually quite bright)–sums up a problem with blogs, wikipedia, social networking, and the internet in general.  (Note that I said “A” problem, not “THE” problem.  I do not hope to go on record as having stated that these media are a blithe on humanity…I actually feel the opposite).

How would I describe this problem?  Noise.

The unfortunate side effect of mediums that provide unlimited freedom of speech and opinion, is that anyone and everyone with a loud voice or flashy site can instantly be deemed an expert, yours truly included.  Allow me to leave the beer world for a moment and delve in to the investment/finance world to prove my point.  A recent ING survey showed that 49% of young investors rely on financial websites and blogs, rather than the pre-webvolution generation that relied on certified, licensed, and trained financial planners.  If you peruse the blogosphere of investment professionals, most do not hold investment licenses (it is a compliance nightmare), and most are in constant disagreement with each other.    I’ve browsed the best and the brightest financial bloggers and  could hardly come to a unified portfolio model, and sensed often that the advice I was receiving was biased, being influenced by the various mutual funds advertising on a given site.

Back to the beer world.

I frequently will go to stumbleupon.com and just click “stumble” but isolate my search to homebrewing.  My goodness.  if you are newbie to homebrewing, please refrain from following my example.  One guy says to sparge with 150 degree water, another guy is preaching 170 degrees, and yet another yahoo is trying to get me to use boiling water.  Decide for yourself who is right…they can’t all be, especially when isolated to a single style.

The comparison I am drawing between the financial field and the beer field, is that too often individuals trust the unreliability of the internet over the experience of the expert.  I recently talked to a gal who brewed up a batch of beer that she defined as “disgusting.”  She hasn’t read a single book on the subject, but read plenty of blogs and watched plenty of youtube videos.  A little “The Complete Joy of Homebrewing” would have done her homebrew a lot of good.  Yes, I realize there are frauds and Madoffs in real world experience, but when they are found out they are stamped out…the eternal memory of the web lives on to deceive another day.

See what I mean about noise?

Twitter can be even worse.

Before you start hating on me, keep reading.

Were noise the ONLY sound of the internet, I would promptly abandon my Facebook account, my Twitter account, sell my droid, and dissolve this website.  What is below the surface?

1. Truth.  Yes, it’s there.  A huge portion of learning how to brew came from internet research.  While I relied on the real life expertise of Mike and authors like Charlie Papazian, I also watched plenty of videos on youtube.  I fact checked these videos against my real life resources, discarded the ones that were simply adhering to the statement I opened this post with (published stupidity) and saved the ones that helped me be better brewer.

2. Community.  Good Lord…the friends you and I have made via blogs, facebook, and twitter.  I only have a few “beer friends” in real life, but man, I have a TON of legitimate, comrades who laugh with me, cry with me, pray with me, correct me where I’m wrong, congratulate me, and vice versa.  I think of all the beer blogs I frequent, the clubs (like Peter’s blogger brewoff), and I realize the noise (that I contribute too!) is worth it.

3. Beer evangelism.  I have seen drastically diametric opinions on certain craft beers spring up, especially on twitter.  In fact, I’ve seen different profiles argue heatedly about whether a beer was great or terrible, a brewer was haughty or clever, or whether IPAs should rule the universe or not.  Regardless, while this is representative of noise, it is just as representative of the subjectivity of taste that I cherish.  The very passion that causes such dissension has also mobilized a vast army that not only seeks to better the beer world in converting the heathen beer drinker to better beer, but also seeks to topple the immoral monopolies that have set the macro, micro, and craft brewery at a disadvantage.  That is righteous.

4. Marketing.  Networking marketing has provided an avenue for breweries without a marketing budget do just that:  Market their product.   I will not go any further here, for this will be discussed at length as the thesis of the next post.

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Preface to this brief Op-Ed series:

I have, and will continue to be critical of internet based technology, particularly social networking sites, which for practical purposes will include “blogs” alongside sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and/or Beer Advocate.  Why?  A reference to this article is as far as I’m will go in explanation at this point. Please keep in my that my irritation with such applications does not mean I render them useless or evil.  Obviously I maintain a blog, am active on Twitter, and enjoy the perks of FaceBook; though I have to take a break from time to time, and I place a higher priority on Social Networking scenarios that are not web based…such as having a beer and a cigar with a few buddies in my backyard.

That being said, I want to explore how social networking is utilized/impacts the craft world.

Part One Social Network Growth:

Stating the obvious, Social Networking growth has been and continues to be exponential. I remembering hopping on a desktop back in 1993, logging on to a buddies AOL account, and attempting to chat (having donned a disguise as a 22 year old) with ladies.  Oh how our giggling anticipation mounted as we waited two minutes for the screen to load.  We did this once a month or so…remember, back in those days internet was like a cell phone plan…once your minutes were up you had to face an irritated father.

Now, 11% of all time spent online is spent on social networking sites.  Time spent on FaceBook increased 700% in 2009 with an ever widening social array making up the consumer.  My old professors now in their 70’s are looking me up.  How many Grandparents do you remember being friends with on Xanga?  Things are changing.

Blogging has reached is zenith. If you are reading this site, odds are you follow a few other “beer blogs.”   Surely you’ve noticed an influx in the past year.  We have.  I can hardly keep up with all the blogs popping out of the woodwork on a daily basis.  In the Spring of 2006 Technorati was tracking 35 million blogs.  In 2007 72 million were being tracked, doubling (nearly) again to 133 million blogs in 2008.

In general 2009 saw an 82% increase in time spent online on social networking sites.  Twitter is boasting over 50 million “tweets” per day.  Did you know that only China and India have populations greater than Facebook?  For more stats, visit this well sourced article.

We are so dependent upon these sites, we have to have them everywhere we go.  Mobile social networking is experiencing a huge upswing.  Facebook mobile saw 112% growth in 2009, and Twitter grew on mobile devices by 337%.  In fact, this humble site is engineered to work with mobile devices.

The numbers do not lie.  Our world has changed drastically in the past ten years.  These as our social constructs change, so does industry.  Companies and marketing firms note where the trends go and they follow.  In upcoming posts, I hope to explore what impact this is having on the beer industry (note I left out the “craft” qualifier.  The macros will fit in the discussion) and offer my two cents.  But before I publish  these future articles, take some time for introspection, as it will help your reading of these soon to come posts.   How has social networking impacted your life?  What is your opinion of these forms of community?  Is your life better as a result?  Worse?

By the way, portions of this blog article were written using my Motorola Droid.  I’m a willing victim too.

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In their article, the Brewer’s Association states:

In 2009, craft brewers represented 4.3 percent of volume and 6.9 percent of retail dollars for the total U.S. beer category. With the total U.S. beer industry representing an estimated retail dollar value of $101 billion, the Brewers Association estimates the actual dollar sales figure from craft brewers in 2009 was $7 billion, up from $6.3 billion in 2008.

In the grand scheme of things, craft beer is still the needle in the haystack, but these figures have some profound implications.  First of all, Americans are drinking considerably less beer.  A nationwide drop of two percent is no small margin.  Second, some are clearly transmigrating to different suds.  And thirdly, and most importantly to me, there is room for considerable growth in the craft community, and people are ready for it.

The beauty of capitalism (sorry Michael Moore…I do know it has its flaws) is that it is very responsive to market conditions:  A struggling giant inadvertently opens the door for the little guy.  An investor who reads these figures will be less inclined than before to get in bed with a company like inBev and more interested in getting in on the ground level with a micro brewery start up…perhaps the start up that Mike and I dream of every night.

Case in point, us beer geeks aren’t the only ones to take notice of our small victory:

The 2009 growth and popularity of beer from small and independent breweries did not go unnoticed by industry observers. The National Restaurant Association Chef Survey (see results), for example, cited “locally-produced wine and beer” among its top five overall trends to watch for in 2010. In the alcohol and cocktails category, the organization ranked “locally-produced wine and beer” as its top trend, while “food-beer pairings” came in at number five on the list.

Little by little, people are tiring of conglomorate.    Herd mentality is waning.   The same capitalistic system that grew some of the beer giants to their inflated sizes is now the force that is humbling them. This gives me hope.

In my opinion, craft beer will never completely overtake big beer as long as American’s continue to bow before the one eyed monster in our living room that boasts of the macro brewers marketing budget.  Besides this, the magnanimous nature of the craft brewer has little to no room for contested market space, dollar motivated mergers/takeovers, and all around consumerism.

At this point, while I rejoice over craft beer’s growth and will continue to do so in subsequent years, I don’t mind that it is still a part of the minority/margin (and not just because my arrogance craves the esoteric).  Should the big boys completely fail and we were to wake up tomorrow with InBev, Molson-Coors, etc. a thing of the past, I would hope that marginal mom & pop diversified nature of craft beer continued on.

Here’s to all the micro and craft brewers out there eking out a living for our sake!  Cheers!

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Macro brewers, on the other hand, are less product oriented and more trend oriented.  Instead of drumming up a reputation for the flavor of the beer, the macro brewer seems to drum a reputation for the brand of the beer.  On Super Bowl Sunday do the Macro Beer commercials lure you with testimonials of great pilsner flavor, or funny cool singing frogs?

Thus said, I find myself enjoying beer marketing in a what-are-they-going-to-think-up-next sense.  That is, how will these macros convince the next generation of college kids their beer is the cool beer.  This is an important task, because for the most part, like Nascar fans, macro beer drinkers are loyal to their brand.

Which brings me Natural Light’s latest campaign.

Like every campaign in its class it is over the top.  It is inundated with cool lingo and hip fonts.  There are sexy people.  There are cool college kids. And there is absolutely no mention of the flavor of Natural Light.  Natural Light is making up or their obvious ommission with the creation of new beer terminology, that when effectively placed in an ad, communicates, “you better be drinking Natty Light, or you’re screwed.”  What are these new words soon to be found in Webster’s?  Nattyisms. The first Nattyism I first saw on a billboard down the street from my house and it read:  “Natastrophe:  Proper description of when you have run out of Natty Light at the party.”

It’s brilliant.  It subtly states that a party just isn’t a party without their beer.  It buys into the brand of American consumerism that preys upon individual insecurities and yearning for the “in crowd.” What better way to coax a clueless college kid to buy your beer?

Oh Rugged Individualism, where are you?   Oh yeah…in the craft beer aisle.

Go ahead…mosey on over to the Natural Light website and indulge in pop marketing.  You know you can’t wait to see what nattyisms Natural Light and their following (the site invites consumer intellect in the form of nattyism submissions) have cooked up.

What is your definition of a Natastrophe?

What are your thoughts on Macro Marketing?

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