Woke-washing?

 

Interesting story hit the wire today, the CEO and co-founder of BrewDog, one of the original UK based craft brewing companies that started back in 2007, has decided to step aside and install a more "corporate" looking bloke from the retail sector. James Watt, the enfant terrible of craft (according to some people) has many enemies in the media and among the more vocal segments of the various woke tribes. He's been central to several scandals over the years and has been accused of "inappropriate behaviour" and fostering a "toxic workplace culture" among other things. 

I think there's no doubt that Watt has sailed pretty close to the wind on several occasions when it comes to edgy marketing and perhaps playing fast and loose with the truth, however he's not unusual in that. It's also a common phenomenon that when a company and/or person achieves success in this country, and particularly when that success is highly visible and fast then there is almost invariably some kind of backlash. It's strange how success is sometimes viewed here, many people appear to resent it. Of course, I'm not suggesting that successful people are somehow immune from the same rules as the rest of us but equally we should all have a modicum of understanding about what it really takes to build a multi-million pound business these days from scratch and how the people at the top of these organisations aren't saints, they're just fallible people like the rest of us. Many of the accusations levelled at Watt have been sketchy to say the least and it's clear that a certain segment of the media are or have been gunning for him, particularly the "right-on" BBC/Guardian types.

Now though, it seems that the board have decided to install a more corporate shaped bloke in his place. Someone who perhaps will dial back the outlandish marketing stunts, focus more on diversity and inclusion schemes, implement more rigid HR policies and essentially woke-wash the whole thing so that the heat Watt attracted is directed somewhere else. Looking at the CV of the bloke that's replacing Watt (James Arrow) though I do worry about a few things. I think it can be justifiably said that although Watt was clearly very driven and successful he was also a bit of a prat! Your classic "A type" personality who jumped into things with both feet and who often put sensitive noses out of joint. He was however passionate about good beer, and had a keen understanding of his product and what this segment of the market is all about. The original message on the back of their flagship beer (Punk IPA) used to be pretty aggressive, I remember reading it in 2011 it was memorable and to the point and the beer (Punk IPA) tasted new, good and different from the bland mass-produced stuff that was pervasive at the time (see  picture below) This kind of anti "corporate happy-talk" attitude went down well with the original group of people that gravitated to the new wave of beers back then, and was a great brand identity forming step for the company. 

Today of course Brewdog is a huge company that has over 2000 employees and 120 bars around the world, like many it has perhaps become what it's founders were trying to disrupt back in 2007! However, I do hope that some of that original spirit can be retained somewhere, if you ask me there's enough corporate  greenwashing, wokewashing, blandness and indistinguishable product in the world, we don't need more.