Yesterday I received a couple of emails (spam) from the PR firm on behalf of Steam Whistle Brewing. For those who don’t know, Steam Whistle is an Ontario based brewery who brew a pilsner and only a pilsner. Steam Whistle Pilsner is sometimes available in BC at the better beer stores (Brewery Creek for example), but the average BC beer drinker won’t have heard of it, much less tasted it. It is a tasty pilsner though, a beer I would recommend to you Bud Light Lime drinkers out there, and it is a shame it is not more widely available out west.
What I want to know is, why did Steam Whistle waste their money on hiring these PR guys? Neither email I received was addressed to me and both were clearly spam, likely sent to every beer related website in Canada. Also, the first email was an invite to a pub crawl in Toronto on Thursday (I’ll be there) and the second was promoting a contest, where the link to the contest in the email didn’t even work (the correct link is on Steam Whistle’s website and it looks like a good contest worth winning). I have nothing against Steam Whistle, but I do feel like this means of marketing is a problem in the beer industry. Why hire an ineffectual PR firm to promote Steam Whistle Pilsner in BC when it is hardly available here? In my opinion, using the PR money (PR firms aren’t cheap) to get their beer into BC liquor stores would be a better strategy. An even better strategy would be to have Steam Whistle employees who know and love their beer establish real relationships with prominent beer bloggers (probably not us, but we’d be friends with them anyway). Why pay a passionless suit when there is this whole free internet thing out there that companies can use to reach people with?
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris – Sybil here from Steam Whistle Brewing. My google alerts just caught this post and I wanted to reply in OEB’s defence. We’ve been working with this media firm for 5 years now because, frankly, we can’t be good at or do everything – the day is too short. Our OEB rep’s a good guy (that doesn’t wear suits), has lots of great ideas and helps us connect with all forms of media. He reps other beer-related organizations, including Toronto’s Festival of Beer, who is running the pubcrawl you mentioned, so Steam Whistle didn’t actually have anything to do with the second press release. Sorry that the link didn’t work; that was my fault as I wrote the release in haste, which he later sent out. Glad that you like the contest. I think it’s a great prize too!
We’ve been active in BC only a few months with 3 test stores in Vancouver and a couple on the island too.
•Brewery Creek Cold Beer & Wine
3045 Main St., Vancouver – phone (604) 872-3373
•West Vancouver Liquor Store
220 16th St., West Van – phone (604) 926-1339
•25th Street Liquor Store
2472 Marine Dr, West Van – phone (604) 926-9463
•6 Mile Liquor Store
498 Island Hwy, Victoria – phone (250) 391-4458
•Kitsilano Cold Beer & Wine
2289 W Broadway, Vancouver – (604) 733-7155
We have a 1957 Chevy painted Steam-Whistle-green http://www.steamwhistle.ca/ourbeer/vehicles-grumpy.php on its way out to BC for the August 1st start of our new guy on the street there, Mike Kiraly, so it’s very early days for us. You should start seeing more distribution of our product soon.
Thanks for covering this on your blog. We really appreciate you getting the word out to your followers, BC residents or otherwise.
Cheers, Sybil
Thanks for the comment Sybil. It’s good to see that you guys are making an effort to make your beer available out here. I know a lot of Ontario expats who pine for it, but unlike the Leafs, it is good. I have definitely picked up some of your beer from Brewery Creek and enjoyed it very much.
I must apologize, I did not realize that the two emails were unrelated. It must have been the fact that they were sent within seconds of each other by the same person that confused me. I realize that not everyone has the time of day to do everything, but I stand by my belief that a passionate employee of your own could achieve far more than a PR firm. And everybody makes mistakes, so the least a PR firm can do for you is click on your links before spamming a bunch of people. Anyway, I apologize if I’ve caused any trouble for you. That being said, I stand by my opinions on spamming as a means of PR/marketing. If a guy I’ve never heard of wants me to post about something, he should introduce himself to me and ask nicely. A summer marketing intern of your own could accomplish this via twitter or a comment on this blog.
Cheers,
Chris
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