The Marketing of Irish Beer in America
Here’s a thing that caught my eye. Before I tell you though I should add that I myself am a stereotype, in an average evening composing up to four poems before getting into a drunken brawl with my dog.
Local microbrewery Boulevard Brewing Co. make some fine beers here in Kansas City. And at several times in the year they bring out a seasonal beer. Nutcracker Ale is available only in November and December, Zon is out in the summer, and Bob’s 47 in autumn.
Boulevard’s Irish Ale is available here in Kansas City, in bottle and on draught, from January through April. On the label it uses celtic interlacing on the first letters, and it has a picture of a Claddagh Ring - presumably because alcohol is the foundation of so many romantic partnerships.
Like the US Marines, and Saint Patrick, Boulevard is on MySpace. It currently has over 1,300 friends. But more than that, Boulevard’s Irish Ale, very recently joined Unfiltered Wheat, by having its own individual presence on MySpace.
So? Well look at Irish Ale’s MySpace address:
www.myspace.com/fuckingboulevardirishale
Maybe BoulevardIrishAle was taken but when Wheat was set up on MySpace, it was created as www.myspace.com/boulevardwheatkc, so why the expletive in the Irish Ale account name? Does it make it funny? Or Irish? Any ideas? Anybody? Sully?
Disclosure: Much as I like Boulevard Pale Ale and Wheat, their “Irish Ale” is not my cup of tea and I always hate this time of year when it takes the place on tap of other beers that I do like - and the fact that bartenders and people at parties keep trying to give it to me. My tastes are not seasonal - I like the same beers twelve months of the year.
See Also:
• Guinness US Packaging Makeover
• Booze Marketing and Irish Stereotyping
• Boulevard Brewery Unfiltered Brown Ale
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Have you ever noticed how the microbrewries in the US try to do shandy? Someone obviously told them to use lemonade which as we all know means 7Up, but they use their lemonade… God it’s attrocious! I rbought this up with a brewery owner in Michigan where I used to live and he flat out didn’t believe me that anyone could call 7Up lemonade, yet had no problem believing that in the south they call all softdrinks coke! Funny world. Love your blog though. My husband is from St. Louis!
Other than the URL what are you bitching about? If I had written this it would have read “Boulevards’ my space account on thier Irish Ale has a discriminatory url. I’m offended.”
This particular entry is the-marketing-of-irish-beer-in-america and I find the url discriminatory, assuming that all marketing of Irish beer in American is discriminatory. I’m not saying you are wrong, yet, but would like more evidence before you can convince me that I should be offende by anyone other than the creator of that myspace account.
QQmore,
Who said I was bitching about anything, even the URL? I simply asked the question as to why the difference in the naming conventions.
There is nothing to stop you creating your own site and writing that there, or indeed writing it here as you have. But if you were writing this and wrote it as something else, then you wouldn’t be writing this - by definition.
Be offended if that floats your boat, but I haven’t expressed the opinion that you should be offended by anyone at all, even by the creator of that MySpace account, so I don’t have a need to convince you that you should be offended by even more people.
You’re right that my title is discriminatory. And deliberately so. I talk about Irish Beer, not American or German. I talk about America, not England or the Czech Republic. And I talk about marketing, not drinking or bottling.
“The Marketing of Irish Beer in America” is the subject. Are you seriously suggesting that it should read “Some Marketing of Some Beer as Irish Beer in Some Parts of Some of the United States of America”? The assumption of “All” is yours.
Whether the answer to the question, that is the point of my post, is ‘Funny’ or ‘Irish’ or something else, I believe there are more circumstances of it, evident especially at this time of year. But I don’t need to prove it.
Please use a genuine e-mail address to post comments.
Deborah,
Have you tried asking for a Rock Shandy?
I guess I did assume you were offended by the url because you pointed it out. And everyone knows what they say about assumption…
To be honest, the second paragraph about the url to this blog entry was truly just a devil’s advocate response to an assumption that wasn’t true. The hippocracy of complaining against Irish discrimination using a blog url entry that was also discriminatory was amusing to me. Turns out that it’s completely invalid because you weren’t talking about discrimination at all.
My personal take on your posed question is that it’s the standard Irish American stereotyping that the creators of the website feel would help in their marketing…as it the stereotype is welcomed by the masses. I don’t see that same strategy working with other ethnicities though.