Because the beer enterprise faces a possible breakup or sale, Interbrand’s Manfredi Ricca argues that its worth now hinges on confronting the latest compromises that eroded its insurgent edge.
The self-styled punk beer model is going through as much as some company dwelling truths (Adobe Inventory)
Oscar Wilde’s The Image of Dorian Grey tells the story of a person whose portrait ages and corrupts whereas his reflection stays unblemished. As BrewDog faces potential breakup and sale, the parallel is inconceivable to disregard. The model – pristine out there’s collective creativeness – has develop into the portrait. The enterprise, in the meantime, reveals one thing more and more exhausting to acknowledge.
When James Watt and Martin Dickie launched BrewDog in 2007, their mission was unambiguous. “We’re going to set fireplace to the scene,” Watt introduced. The corporate positioned itself as a fierce rebel towards company beer behemoths, designed “for individuals who give a rattling.” The manifestos got here thick and quick: punk IPA was the flagship, “Fairness Punks” invited to rowdy shareholder conferences that resembled rock festivals, and stunts that ranged from provocative to outright weird – helicoptering taxidermy cats above the Metropolis of London, filming themselves destroying Heineken cans. Each marketing campaign, each product launch, each public look screamed irreverence. This was a enterprise that outlined itself as a substitute for the institution.
Watt and Dickie had noticed an area out there – and there undoubtedly was a market within the hole. The group that coalesced round BrewDog was real. 130,000 small traders, the ‘Fairness Punks’, weren’t simply funding a beer firm; they had been becoming a member of a motion. The annual conferences grew to become pilgrimage websites for individuals who felt alienated by company beer tradition. The model spoke to a demographic hungry for authenticity, rebelliousness, and a way of belonging to one thing that mattered. BrewDog was promoting excess of beer.
But someplace between that storage startup and a £321m income enterprise, one thing corroded. An organization that outlined itself as “fiercely impartial” started signing offers with world producers – notably investing £500,000 in Heineken, the very company behemoth it had ridiculed. It struck partnerships with Budweiser China. It amassed shareholdings from personal fairness companies. When the punk costume not match, BrewDog tried more durable stunts: a ‘Pink IPA’ for gender equality (criticized as cynical), a ‘transgender beer’ (rebuked for its language), a ‘protest beer’ deploying uncomfortable LGBTQI+ tropes. Genuine rebelliousness started to seem like predictable posturing.
Then got here 2021. Former staff gathered beneath the banner ‘Punks with Function’ and accused the corporate of fostering a “tradition of concern,” of bullying, of treating employees “like objects.”
BrewDog misplaced its B Corp certification. In 2024, it froze wages for bar workers and employed new staff on the authorized minimal fairly than the true dwelling wage it as soon as championed.
Right here lies the prognosis: BrewDog succeeded as a result of it tapped into a real starvation for rebelliousness and irreverence. However fairly than be its final custodian, the enterprise started trying as if it was calling the model’s bluff. Development generated compromise, and compromise demanded the very issues the model rejected – company governance, revenue maximization, and a blurring of earlier pink strains.
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In beer, maybe greater than in most classes, the model is the enterprise. BrewDog competed virtually totally on model fairness. Which suggests the model itself – one of many components that may very well be allegedly damaged away – continues to be its widest moat and most respected asset.
Figuring out the model’s present and potential monetary worth is not only potential; it’s now important. How a lot has the reputational backfire eroded it? What’s its residual aggressive energy and talent to drive alternative in a cluttered market? How would that worth change beneath several types of suitors? The reply will make a distinction of a number of million kilos in any sale or breakup.
In opposition to that worth, a purchaser will inherit some real strengths: a recognizable identification, a profitable and revered vary of merchandise, worldwide attain, and a route into crowded cabinets and congested faucets.
Simply as importantly, a purchaser may also be endowed with one thing that any insurgent can at all times profit from: a redeeming, cathartic contemporary begin. That is the place the restoration mission begins, and it’s a counterintuitive one: a model that positioned itself as a insurgent towards the company institution should now develop into a insurgent towards its personal latest previous.
For traders contemplating BrewDog’s future, one factor ought to be saved in thoughts: an acquisition by a conglomerate geared toward creating tight governance, strict company pointers, and short-term monetary strain, would threat depriving the model of its edge. BrewDog grew exactly as a result of it wasn’t promoting beer as a lot as independence and irreverence. Strip that away, and also you undermine the very level of the model. Some manufacturers are born to reside within the wilderness – not a zoo.
The portrait has already diverged from the face, and any additional compromise dangers rendering the model fully unrecognizable. The model that when set fireplace to the scene should now rebuild from its ashes. However provided that whoever buys it understands that you would be able to’t simply label rebelliousness – you have to serve it.
Manfredi Ricca is world chief technique officer at Interbrand
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