The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Brewdog

Brewdog addresses criticism with more humour and slams those who took offence

Author

By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

September 11, 2015 | 2 min read

Brewdog has released a statement addressing the widespread criticism of its funding ad in which founders Watt and Martin Dickie pose in drag.

The Scottish beer brewer said in a statement that it did not accept the criticism of the 'Don’t Make Us Do This... Equity for Punks’ funding ad and slammed those who believed it was ridiculing the kinds of people portrayed in it.

The brand came under fire for the ad earlier this month, which resulted in 8,000 people signing a petition claiming it featured “offensive caricatures of people, many of whom already suffer discrimination every day [such as] homeless people, trans women and sex workers”.

In the response Brewdog went on to say that it didn’t take itself seriously and stood by everything the video promoting, adding that its intentions were to change the face of small business finance.

The statement continued to use the brand’s sense of humour and attempted to clear up just who it discriminated against. It said that Brewdog “cannot and will not guarantee that at some point we will not offend the following groups due to our deep-seated and heartfelt prejudices”. It then went on to list a number of groups including Sepp Blatter; Nazis; overweight cats; diet drinks and people who put lime into lager bottles.

The company summed up its advertising approach by saying “we sometimes don’t take ourselves too seriously” and asked people to accept the list of groups as full transparency regarding who and what it discriminated against, warning that it may well ridicule them in the future. The statement concluded that anyone believes “we are ridiculing anything other than people or items listed above, you are either misguided, ill-informed or out of your tiny mind".

Brewdog

More from Brewdog

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +