(Aberdeen, SCOTLAND) – Diageo just sent a formal apology statement to BeerPulse (and the rest of the media) regarding the BrewDog incident.
“There was a serious misjudgement by Diageo staff at the awards dinner on Sunday evening in relation to the Bar Operator of the Year Award, which does not reflect in anyway Diageo’s corporate values and behaviour. We would like to apologise unreservedly to BrewDog and to the British Institute of Innkeeping for this error of judgement and we will be contacting both organisations imminently to express our regret for this unfortunate incident.”
BrewDog said on its blog on Wednesday morning that it had been told by the BII at its annual awards show that Diageo staffers threatened to pull future sponsorship if BrewDog was given one of the awards. Diageo is the awards show’s biggest sponsor.
The story trended on Twitter worldwide at one point.
https://twitter.com/#!/brewdog/status/200216225945632768
Coincidentally, Diageo’s CEO, Paul Walsh, just gave the keynote speech in the opening session of Ethical Corporation’s two-day Responsible Business Summit.
Diageo carries a number of competing beer brands in its portfolio including Guinness and Red Stripe.
Finally, we are starting to see the seriousness of the situation at hand. Regardless if its 3% market share, 5%, 8%, or 10%, REAL craft beer is taking consumers and their dollars from the imports and big guys. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior by Diageo and, in my opinion, they are going to need to do a lot more to reestablish “responsible” business image. Expect a lot more stories like this to come out in 2012. The little brother is wooing the big bro’s girlfriend.
Cheers to Brew Dog.
The funny thing is, if Diageo hadn’t done this, I would have never even known that the BII existed, nor that BrewDog had won an award.
I usually only hear about Brew Dog when they’re packaging beer in rodents or freeze concentrating a new beer to some stupid high level.
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