FAIL: Hops and Dreams: The Beer That Nobody "Cheers'd" To Artwork

Embracing Marketing Mistakes

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading irreverent podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate b*llshit.

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Embracing Marketing Mistakes

FAIL: Hops and Dreams: The Beer That Nobody "Cheers'd" To

June 19, 2025 • Prohibition PR

0:00 | 3:11

Rachel Auty, head of marketing at Brew York, discusses the brewery birthday celebration that featured collaborations with international breweries like Lervig and Hidden Springs, creating six beers with a Eurovision tie-in called "Collabivision."

What seemed like marketing genius internally received a lukewarm public reception, teaching them valuable lessons about keeping messaging focused and straightforward.

• Timed release with Eurovision in the UK and called it "Collabivision"
• Created adventurous beer flavours including a cherry stout
• Found the concept exciting internally but met with public indifference
• Realised we had too many marketing messages competing for attention

For the full episode visit: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2206375/episodes/13748919

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Birthday Beer Collaborations Explained

Speaker 1 0:00

So for our birthday party this year , we decided we were going to brew a series of beers . We did collaborations with , like international breweries really exciting proposition . We kind of , you know , we got Lervig , we got Hidden Springs . From America , we got gosh who else did we get ? Anyway , it was a set of six incredible international breweries and we were like , let's do a collab , you know , six beers collab with each . And we thought we were being , I mean , it was a bit genius . You know , we tied into the Eurovision because we were like , what's going on at the time ? We're going to be releasing these Eurovision , brilliant , it's in the UK , this is fantastic

The Collabivision Marketing Concept

Speaker 1 0:41

. So we made these beers and we we called them collabivision okay , and it was , you know , a lot of genius in there too much .

Speaker 1 0:49

I feel like we got a lot more excited internally than perhaps the public did . Like there was a I mean , obviously we wanted to get people talking about it , but the beers themselves were like really quite um , adventurous flavors , like stuff . A little bit

Marketing Lessons Learned

Speaker 1 1:05

like there was one that was a bit a bit more sensible . It was like a stout with cherry and that was fine . But there were some that were a little bit crazy and I feel like there was just too much going on in that series . I feel like the the concept was great on its own and the beers were really interesting on their own , but together I feel like some things just got a bit noisy yeah , a bit too noisy .

Speaker 1 1:26

We tried too

Keep It Simple Principle

Speaker 1 1:27

hard . Too many messages , too clever . Yeah , too many messages is a big thing . They say try and keep it simple , don't they ? Because otherwise people just loot . You lose it . Yeah , and we've all done that , haven't we ? You know , when you come up with an amazing campaign , you're high-fiving in the office , yeah , yeah , and it's met with indifference , yeah , and then like three people go oh , wow .

People on this episode

Chris Norton

Host

Will Ockenden

Host