Fuck me sideways! How could I have forgotten about it when I wrote yesterday's post! It only hit my mind like a bitch slap from a primary school bully in the evening, when I was making dinner, and it's the best evidence to support my argument that in the Czech beer discourse, minipivovar = Craft Beer.
Do you remember last year's Gambrinus marketing stunt? With the fake Pivovar Patron, what Gambrinus wanted to prove (or at least so they claim) was that, stripped of prejudice, their beers were every bit as good as those from minipivovary.
I reviewed media coverage of the campaign and I wasn't able to find a single mention of řemeslné pivo(var), not even in blogs and fora; minipivovar, in contrast, appears in every article and post. I also watched the official video of the “big reveal” where
This is clear proof that, even for marketing illusionists, mini/maly pivovar means a lot more than just size; that consumers have invested those words with attributes equivalent to those the Craft brand enjoys in other countries. Whether they are deserved or not, it's another question; the worst, most overrated and overpriced beers I've drunk in my life were from Craft Breweries/Minipivovary, but so were the best.
At the end of the day, though, it's all marketing, where words are not much more than something that can be twisted, squeezed, used and abused in pretty much any way that may be useful to get some sales.
Na Zdraví!
Words are what we make them :).
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