BrewDog is a business that has been growing well in recent years, and has secured legions of fans on social media.
BrewDog has become very well-stocked in the majority of supermarkets, and continue to try new flavours to freshen up their appeal.
But in a blog post talking about the biggest mistakes that BrewDog’s co-founder and CEO made since their inception, James Watt caused some controversy with his comments.
Background
Watt was writing on LinkedIn in a piece entitled “My 10 Biggest Mistakes As BrewDog’s CEO”.
He described himself and his co-founder Martin as “2 wide-eyed 24 year olds” back in 2007 when the business was founded.
The business currently employs over 2,000 people, and has over 100 bars around the world. Clearly, they are succeeding as a business.
The Mistakes
His post started discussing some of the mistakes that BrewDog had made, with a few typical mistakes that are seen with many businesses.
These include franchising too early, taking legal action against smaller bars
They also commented on the impact that their work had on the environment. They suggested they had been too slow to realise the damage that they were causing, though steps have been taken to remedy that.
The post states that BrewDog are currently carbon negative, and remove twice as much carbon from the air as they emit, which is impressive.
BrewDog’s Social Justice Warrior Ways
Unfortunately, BrewDog does have a history of what would commonly be seen as an effort to appeal to those who support a radical left-wing agenda.
They also acknowledged what could be seen as a “social justice warrior” move gone wrong. Others may deem it as BrewDog attempting to be “woke”.
This refers to their efforts to highlight a gender pay gap of 20%. In order to do this, they decided to sell their products at a 20% discount to females.
Obviously, there was significant criticism. It was a sexist action, and ended up achieving the exact thing they were supposedly fighting against.
Watt’s Disappointing Trump Remark
While we aren’t in a position to lecture anyone, especially not people that have built a million dollar company, it would be fair to assert that dismissing a group of 70million people can’t be good for business.
At the end of Watt’s post, he mentioned how a situation in 2017 resulted in a “rogue” individual at the agency sending out a press release that suggested Trump supporters would have free beer.
This of course refers to those who supported the successful election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States.
But Watt stated that the event was immediately cancelled, and legal action was launched.
Then, in what Watt called a “bizarre” decision, a judge presiding over the case said:
“TO SAY SOMEONE WAS A DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTER WOULD NOT ARGUABLY LOWER THAT PERSON IN THE EYES OF RIGHT-THINKING PEOPLE GENERALLY”
-The judge
So understandably, and as any reasonable individual would surely agree, just because someone has a different political view to you, it doesn’t mean that they become “lower” than you.
Such a suggestion is arrogant, discriminative, and shows a sickening degree of self-righteousness.
Unfortunately, Watt mentioned that the brand “strongly disagree” with the sentiments of the Judge.
In other words, Watt believes that anyone that dares to have a different political stance than him is not “right-minded”. Yes, that goes for 70million people.
This is regrettable, and an unfortunate way to end what had been an informative post.
Many comments on the post suggested that Watt had been inappropriate in his assertion that 70million American citizens were not “right-minded”.
Comments Akin to Hate Groups
One person rightfully pointed out that brandishing a large group of people with the same stick is what groups like Nazi’s did with Jews, and the Ku Klux Klan did with black individuals.
Now we are no way suggesting that BrewDog will act in the abhorrent ways of the aforementioned groups, but they are acting in a similarly dismissive manner.
Other comments stated that the Trump comment was enough to put them off engaging with BrewDog.
Alienating a large amount of your customers in the name of pandering to a radical left-wing agenda rarely works, as Gillette continue to find.
Hilary Clinton found a similar fate after lambasting Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables”. Clinton fell to a crushing defeat.
While BrewDog are unlikely to suffer any huge hit as a result of these comments, it is unfortunate to see, and simply not fair to dismiss the views of 70million people, just because they think differently to you.
Maybe one day that comment will be viewed as the eleventh mistake. Only time will tell.
