More On the Brewers Association’s ‘Take Craft Back’ Campaign

The Brewers Association’s  faux crowdfunding effort to generate the funds necessary to buy  Anheuser-Busch InBev, is all the beer biz is talking about of late…and wasn’t that one of the things that the BA hoped to accomplish?

The BA’s launch of their tongue-in-cheek ‘Take Craft Back ’ campaign, was from our perspective, brilliantly orchestrated and we’re kinda amazed that they were able to keep the whole thing under wraps prior to this week.

Clearly a lot of thought, time and money went into this effort…domain names secured, websites designed and put in place, and a hilarious and winning video (which serves as the campaign’s centerpiece) produced.

Described as the “largest crowdfunding effort in history”, the Take Craft Back encourages craft beer lovers to pledge fake dollars towards the $213 billion target, the estimated total value of AB InBev , the global conglomerate that’s been so  busy acquiring small breweries across the country.

But it was the campaign’s video which featured this off-centered character, Andy (think a skinnier Chris Pratt) as the official spokesperson for the sham crowd-funding effort, that made this thing fly.

Filmed at Upslope Brewing, and incorporating the tagline “They buy us now, now we buy them,” The BA produced video deftly contextualized their whole argument against Big Beer’s ongoing campaign to diffuse craft beer movement.

It was hilarious and like something you’d see on SNL… Its tone was also pitch-perfect.

And as anyone who works in online publishing knows, adding video content to a site eats up bandwidth, making for a sluggish page load-in time, which in turn can affect the website’s uber- important SEO and your Google ranking.

So a video has to be truely winning to justify its site placement, and the BA’s video nailed it …Hundreds of online publications ran with it (they had to…it was that good) and as a result it’s everywhere today, and so is the BA”s message.

And yes, there are those who might see the Brewer’s Association initiative as costly or misguided.

In an email to Brewbound an anonymous source called the campaign “gimmicky” and “embarrassing,”

“This sort of campaign is diluting the BA’s initiatives. Rather than spend time on marketing campaigns like this that pander to the casual small brewer, the BA should spend time on programming that actually educates the community,” the emailer concluded.

In the long run, getting the word out there, is just that, getting the word out there…And that in essence is all this campaign can hope to achieve…

The ultimate determining factor as too this campaign’s effectiveness …and whether independent craft brewers can withstand Big Beer’s attempt to buy into the craft beer movement, remains (as it always has) with the consumer..

And only time will tell how that plays out.