A recent post on AskAsheville, a local blog run by Gary Charles, speculates that local breweries may be tapped out when it comes to caring about the title of Beer City, USA. As of this morning’s poll results, Asheville tied with Grand Rapids, Mich. for the right to call itself Beer City, USA. In his post, Charles focuses on the Twitter presence of local brewing companies. He lists 11 breweries and the amount of times they tweeted about the poll. He then proceeds to speculate that the lack of tweets stem from a general apathy from brewers to win the title again. A portion of this post is listed below and can be found in full at the link at the bottom of this post:
From the post at AskAsheville:
…Even if your brewery has 2 or more hometown cities or many distribution points; vote for and promote the one in the big lead!! I know all of these companies benefit from the Beer City USA Title and Asheville being a brew and brewing destination, so why not support it? Maybe it is their marketing strategist who is not on the pulse? Maybe is the owner who is living high and heavy on past Beer City USA titles and does not care? Until Asheville loses of course… then they want to say “we tried.” BLAH! I see many of the breweries talking about themselves and their events; but when it came to Beer City USA, there was an apathetic silence of sorts. How are we supposed to support breweries who do not even step up and encourage people to vote for Asheville as Beer City USA? If local Asheville based breweries cannot get their act together to promote and support the movement, then my company and several others refuse to from here on!!
Speaking as someone who has worked in the business locally now for several years, me and the majority of people I speak to on a regular basis couldn’t care less about this overblown poll.
It’s basically a joke to everyone, other than maybe a few owners who like to use it for ego-stroking/vanity/promotional reasons. It’s something the media has hyped-up beyond belief and at this point we’re all so sick of hearing about it, because a) it’s totally unscientific and therefore meaningless when you get right down to it, and b) at this point why do we need a gimmick poll to tell us and everyone else we’re Beer City USA? Last I checked, we just scored two of the largest craft beer producers in the country, and now Oskar Blues, to boot. I think that, coupled with at least 12 locally grown operations, is more than proof enough.
Leave the hyperbolic, media-driven poling to other places.
Most of the local breweries don’t have marketing strategists. Nor do they have much time to hang out on Twitter. Not even all of them are on Twitter.