On the Marketing of Stone Brewery's Arrogant Bastard Ale

[Jonathan Siegel <jmsiegel@yahoo.com>]

There was a recent article in the food section of the
Los Angeles Times on Stone Brewery, whose flagship
product is called Arrogant Bastard Ale.
(www.arrogantbastard.com) On its label (and web site)
it says (and I'll quote it in full):

>"This is an aggressive beer. You probably won't like
it. It is quite doubtful that you have the
sophistication or taste to be able to appreciate a
beer of this quality or depth. We suggest you stick
with something safer and more familiar -- maybe
something with a multi-million dollar ad campaign
aimed at convincing you its made in a little brewery,
or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow
beer will give you more sex appeal. Perhaps you think
multi-million dollar ad campaigns make a beer taste
better. Perhaps you're mouthing your words as you read
this."

This seems to be a very successful approach. The stuff
seems to be selling like hotcakes. It may well be a
pretty decent beer, but I -- and I suspect most people
who buy it -- would really have no way of knowing
that. (How would I know?) Rather, Arrogant Bastard's
marketing approach illustrates how a mere claim to
have superior knowledge that the potential customer
isn't even capable of understanding can be a selling
point -- at least temporarily. 

But in a business as full of fads and phases as beer
(or, for that matter, management consulting), can such
a market positioning -- for that is what it is -- be
expected to last forever? For if one doesn't know
oneself -- as the Arrogant Bastards of this world
constantly remind us -- how is one supposed to
distinguish those who actually know something from
those who merely claim to know because it helps them
unload more product? (And if they do know something,
how is one to tell if it is WORTH knowing?) 

Arrogant Bastard's claim that there is some sort of
profound knowledge about beer, so that those who
prefer one type are truly more ignorant than those who
prefer another, does strike one as a little
questionable on sober reflection. I must report,
however, that the idea of beer imparting profound
knowledge seems more reeasonable the more one has
drunk. 

And if one doesn't know -- as the Arrogant Bastards of
this world keep reminding us -- it's also perfectly
understandable that someone would find a similar claim
about, say, management consulting, a little
questionable as well. Moreover, people also tend to
find claims about management consulting more
reasonable the more they have consumed as well. Is
this effect any different from that of beer? Both
change how one thinks, but does one do so in a better
way than the other? Or is it simply a matter of being
"under the influence"?

It's entirely appropriate to challenge those who claim
to know and see if there is anything to their claims.
A Greek dude called Socrates started a business out of
this line of work, although to date nobody has found a
way to make it very profitable. For some reason
claiming to know can be great marketing, but
challenging claims can grate on people in a way that
can be very bad for business -- as Socrates found out.

I want to suggest that Arrogant Bastard marketing
tends to be singularly associated with fads in our
society. People can hold someone or something in awe
as knowing more than they do only temporarily, then
they move on to someone else who makes a splashier
claim. Creole cuisine gets replaced by Carribean. The
lives of aging rock stars can sometimes be very sad. 

But things do endure despite very bad marketing.
Gallileo, for example, clearly did not market his
theories in a way that pleased most of his
contemporaries, and yet we today largely hold them.
One difference between Galileo and Arrogant Beer is
that people needed Galileo in a really profound way.
It doesn't really matter all that much what kind of
beer you drink, but it matters a great deal how you
think the stars work if you navigate a ship and want
to chart accurately and actually get somewhere.

In other words, if you really know something and what
you know is really worth knowing, the thing will
eventually speak for itself; people will need it, as
long as its still there for them to realize this.

In other words, if one is really arrogant enough to
believe one knows something worth knowing, one can  be
arrogant enough to be humble. The product will sell,
if not necessarily in ones lifetime. If one is this
arrogant, however, one should also know enough to know
one can't necessarily make a living off of what one
knows. But if one can make a living, it will probably
come in quietly educating. There is no inherent
relationship between the value of what one knows and
how much others esteem it. As Jerry Weinberg puts it
in what he calls "the rule of the clueless," those who
need our expertise most are least likely to ask for
it, because they don't even know that it is there or
that they need it. One constantly needs, as David
Kerridge recently reminded me, to have compassion. 

It is only those who aren't certain about their
knowledge, or who need to make a quick buck whether
they really know anything or not, who need to shout
their arrogance from the rooftops. I suspect the
Arrogant Bastard Ales of this world may be in that
category. 

Jonathan Siegel 

P.S. I understand this email may not get through some
software filters. Perhaps I can provide a sanitized
version if this happens a lot.