The Problem with Men...And Beer

Is it a moral failure to notice that men like beer?

Is it OK or is it a sign of moral weakness for a beer company to market its suds primarily to men?

This is the question that has been rolling around my head for the past week after having read a story in Drinks Business by Jessica Mason entitled, “Why marketing beer products as male-centric needs to stop.”

Ms. Mason, who knows something about the beer world (she is a long-time staff writer for Drinks Business who covers beer, has written books about beer, and organizes events surrounding beer), doesn’t actually tell us why marketing beer products as male-centric must stop. However, she does tell us this:

“Drinks, which have historically – and somewhat archaically – been marketed in the past as engendered products, as either ‘strong enough for men’ or ‘sweet enough for women’ have made great strides in terms of diversity, inclusion and equality of late. However, recent reports suggest that marketing to single sex demographics still exists, especially across beer, despite its popularity with all gender identities.”

The implication is that in order to create a more inclusive world for non-men that helps to create diversity and equality across genders, beer companies ought to ignore the fact that it is overwhelmingly men who prefer to drink beer.

The further implication is that when a beer company does not ignore that it is men more than any other demographic that reach for beer first and creates ads or promotions depicting males holding beers and watching football (or engaging in some other activity that is overwhelmingly preferred by men) this deters women from drinking beer, considering beer as a career, and makes life for women uncomfortably unequal. I think it also implies that the beer company creating a promotion that has a group of males holding beers after a rugby match (also an activity primarily enjoyed by males) the beer company is failing on a moral level.

I wonder if there ought to be some balance allowed between the inclination of beer marketers to attempt to attract to their product the males who predominantly will want to buy it on the one hand and on the other hand attempting to shame those same marketers into ignoring such a well defined purchasing demographic on the theory that women can’t cope with and are permanently harmed by seeing a picture of just boys enjoy their suds

A Gallup survey from earlier this year tells us that 54% of men choose beer as their preferred drink of choice, compared to 23% for women. Can we agree there is no moral failing among beer marketers if they choose to do the economical and profitable thing of chasing the low-hanging fruit?

Ms. Mason’s current concern, the one that led to the article that didn’t tell us “why”, was occasioned by the commencement of a promotion by Victoria Bitter, a beer brand brewed by Asahi’s Carlton & United Breweries. Apparently, Victoria Bitters has released a skincare line that “has real beer in it”, but makes the mistake of marketing it to specifically to men.

On the other hand, Heineken recently branched out from beer with the launch of a pair of shoes (“Heinekicks”) that have beer injected into their soles. The difference between the skincare line and the shoes, as Ms. Mason explains is “that the [Heineken] off-shoot product was not engendered and only targeted at men, in fact, it went out of its way to highlight it was a product for all.”

Ms. Mason concludes: “With examples in the beer industry of how some brands can get things right and others continue to marginalise the beer products as engendered, the evolution of beer’s diversity continues to be up for debate as marketeers catch up on best practice.”

The apparent problem that Ms. Mason identifies isn’t that we continue to notice that in some respects men and women act differently. Rather, the apparent problem is that our response to these differences appears to be rational.