{"id":5609,"date":"2013-06-02T17:10:48","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T05:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=5609"},"modified":"2018-07-19T18:20:28","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T06:20:28","slug":"made-to-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2013\/06\/02\/made-to-match\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Made to Match’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"'Made<\/a>
‘Made to Match’ landing page, with standard age-verification nonsense<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, it looks like Lion \u2014 one half of the local brewing duopoly, and ultimately a subsidiary of Kirin* \u2014 is taking out a series of infomercials on TVNZ. Product placement so thick it amounts to entire blocks<\/em> of ‘programming’ was probably the invention of home improvement shows and hardware stores, and maybe brewery marketing departments just got jealous and wanted in on the action.<\/p>\n

Al Brown, one of those forever-wandering-with-a-film-crew TV chefs, will host ‘Made to Match’<\/a>: a series about beer and food matching, apparently including the range of beers available, some background on their styles, and what goes well with what. I couldn’t be more behind the idea of\u00a0normalising<\/em> beer in this way \u2014 the near-constant conjunction of “and wine” whenever the topic turns to good food is grindingly sad \u2014 but there’s a lot to lament in the pitch of this show \/ ad campaign \/\u00a0thing<\/em>. I’m honestly not sure what category of production it belongs in, from what I’ve seen so far; whether it’s a series of daytime advertorials, online-only webisodes, or an actual ‘show’ that’ll be broadcast on to the physical teevee box. But then, “television”, much like “phone”, is one of those increasingly-abstracted gadget-concepts, anyway.1<\/sup><\/a><\/a> It all has the same effect, in the end, especially when the programming-advertising boundary is blurred\u00a0this<\/em> hard.<\/p>\n

It takes ‘origin-fudging’<\/a> \u2014 the increasingly common practice of being, shall we say,\u00a0less than entirely truthful<\/em> about the history and production of various beers \u2014 to a depressingly deep new low.\u00a0Here,\u00a0every brand is presented in a maximally-distorted way, just as the marketing department would like. The mere fact that\u00a0all<\/em> of these beers are produced and\/or distributed by one company is entirely elided, and Lion itself only rates a mention in the beer-descriptions department during the (hilariously straight-faced) write-up for Lion Red<\/a>. Even Steinlager<\/a> is treated almost as if it were a from different company, and Lion \/ Kirin* are entirely absent from the website’s WHOIS information<\/a>; there, it’s all TVNZ. I’m sure it’s all well within the\u00a0rules<\/em> about product placement \u2014 tellingly, Lion’s own corporate policy<\/a> seems only to care about when\u00a0other people<\/em> use their products as props, and doesn’t commit to being open about when\u00a0it<\/em> does so \u2014 or at least that someone on a healthy retainer stands poised to so argue, but it does stink a bit.<\/p>\n

\""Beck's",<\/a>
“Beck’s”, trying very hard to look German<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The beers that Lion brew here in New Zealand under license are hyped as long-heritaged international imports as hard as possible: Beck’s is \u201cthe No. 1 German beer<\/a> in the world\u201d and \u201c…brewed according to Reinheitsgebot\u201d;2<\/sup><\/a><\/a> Guinness is \u201cknown worldwide as the beer of Ireland<\/a>, and the gold standard for stouts\u201d;3<\/sup><\/a><\/a>\u00a0Oranjeboom dates \u201cback to 1528\u201d and is a \u201cpopular European beer [which] originates from Breda<\/a> in Holland\u201d; Stella Artois’ story \u201cdates back to 1366\u201d and its \u201cthe best selling Belgian beer brand<\/a> in the world\u201d.4<\/sup><\/a><\/a>\u00a0On the more-local front, gdmfing Crafty Beggars<\/a> make an appearance with Lion still not feeling proud enough of their brewers and their beer to admit that the ‘rogue brewers’<\/a> are their employees, while Speight’s ‘Distinction Ale’ happily crows about winning several awards<\/a> despite the categories they were in being directly contradictory to how the brand is marketed. And just look at how the ‘James Squires’<\/a> beers are steeped in their Colonial Australian history and bursting with references to the country’s first commercial brewer, deftly skating past the uncomfortable fact that the beers are merely\u00a0named<\/em> after<\/em> him<\/a>; there’s no\u00a0history<\/em> here, just brandwank.<\/p>\n

The blurbs always fall\u00a0just<\/em> short of outright lies \u2014 their lawyers are too good for that \u2014 but, taken together, form a teetering pile of half-truths and non-sequiturs that looks very-carefully-crafted indeed to achieve maximum bullshit without opening up liability, and to maintain the illusion that this is a diverse range of beers picked for their inherent qualities and suitability to the task, rather than a (presumably) bought-and-paid-for exclusive placement which locks out all other local and international candidates. All that said, if you delve into the “Terms & Conditions”<\/a>, Lion do finally front up and say ‘Hello! We’re in charge of this thing, by the way.’ \u2014 and the statistics are predictably grim on what miniscule fraction of humanity actually clicks through to pages labelled\u00a0that<\/em>. But it’s mostly there to completely disclaim, in the usual spineless boilerplate, any promises of accuracy \u2014 their marketing code of practice, equally tellingly, contains no particular commitments about being truthful and forthcoming with the facts \u2014 and to (weirdly) suggest that I’m not allowed to link to them without their express permission, in an apparent complete misunderstanding of\u00a0how the internet works<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Crafty<\/a>
The disingenuous Crafty Beggars bottle blurbs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Big breweries (and Lion, in particular) have a habit of playing their brands \u2014 and thereby their consumers \u2014 off against each other, in a way that’ll easily leave the impression that ‘Made to Match’ is better-rounded than it is. For everyone who makes beer who\u00a0isn’t<\/em> Lion, it’ll do a tremendous disservice-by-omission, and so it damn well better have an enormously prominent “this program brought to you by Lion” kind of disclaimer front and center \u2014 especially (but not only) since it’s airing on, and seemingly produced in substantial cooperation with, the national broadcaster. Little buried disclosures (like what they have so far) are only ever the absolute minimum, they’re not automatically exculpatory.<\/p>\n

It’s going to be worth watching to see how they play that kind of thing \u2014 and to find out more about TVNZ’s involvement \u2014 but I’m not optimistic enough to think it’ll be anything other than a sin-counting exercise in seeing\u00a0how<\/em> shameless they are, rather than waiting to see\u00a0if<\/em> they front up decently. Which is a real shame, because there’s a huge need for mass-media beer education of an engaged and entertaining sort, but you just can’t<\/em> trust the Big Breweries to handle this stuff in any kind of fair and honest and genuinely informative way.5<\/sup><\/a><\/a> Their structure, their contrived “brand stories”, their peculiar kind of cowardice<\/em> when it comes to the realities of their history and how they operate, and their ingrained shitty haibts just won’t let them, it seems \u2014 their approach to selling their products is entirely at odds with providing<\/em> information<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The ‘Made to Match’ website’s footer, crediting everyone except<\/em> Lion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

*:<\/strong> This post originally phrased Lion’s ultimate parentage as “Kirin \/ Mitsubishi” which I’ve since learned isn’t correct. Kirin is a member of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, but that’s not the same thing as being a subsidiary of the car maker, which was the impression I initially had, and passed on, here. Thanks to Danny at Lion for the correction (July 2018).<\/span>
\n<\/a>1:<\/strong> I don’t own a television set, but I watch a fair amount of ‘TV’ \u2014 though not like it was traditionally broadcast, an episode at a time, once a week. And my phone spends a tiny fraction of its time as a “phone” \u2014 most of the time it’s a really little computer with sensory capabilities that more resemble a goddamn Trek-esque tricorder<\/a>. Welcome to the future. (Now where’s my flying car?)\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>2:<\/strong> Even though it’s not, for several reasons<\/a>; the claim to follow a German law is just one of many ways they insinuate a German origin.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>3:<\/strong> It’s definitely<\/em> not that, though it is for Irish Dry Stout, a corner of the black-beer spectrum that it basically invented. Speaking as a long-suffering bartender, way too many people see black beer and think “Guinness” and \u2014 if they happen not to like Guinness \u2014 shut themselves off from a wonderful range of options.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>4:<\/strong> Glengarry \/ Hancock’s hilariously inept promotional video<\/a> has been ridiculed plenty \u2014 but still not enough. For present purposes, it’s worth re-watching as the least-subtle-ever use of that slippage between “beer” and “beer brand”.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>5:<\/strong> It’s an utterly trivial example, really, but the contradiction between the inclusion of a pretty-good ‘Why you should always pour your beer into a glass’<\/a> section and the classic “everyone at a barbeque drinking from the bottle, with the label carefully-but-casually held facing outwards” montage of the introductory video<\/a> speaks volumes right out of the gate.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, it looks like Lion \u2014 one half of the local brewing duopoly, and ultimately a subsidiary of Kirin* \u2014 is taking out a series of infomercials on TVNZ. Product placement so thick it amounts to entire blocks of ‘programming’ was probably the invention of home improvement shows and hardware stores, and maybe brewery marketing … Continue reading ‘Made to Match’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55,4],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-5609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-finds","category-blahblah","tag-brandwank"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":670,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2009\/01\/17\/invercargill-biman\/","url_meta":{"origin":5609,"position":0},"title":"Invercargill ‘Biman’","author":"Phil","date":"January 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Although winner of its class at the relatively-recent Beer Festival here in town, I hadn't gotten around to trying one. 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