A message from Sam (Dogfish Head) on current RateBeer changes

Was there a conflict of interest situation prior to 9 months ago?

Cheers!

 

I am confident in saying that as regards ABI advertising this won't be the case on RateBeer.

Cheers!

 

We agree that it's all marketing. I'm just trying to draw a line between advertising and marketing.

The flipside of your example about smart business people using this site's "advertising" without paying for it is the fact that not all beers get recommended, and the brewers have zero control over what does get recommended. Or when things get severely criticized.

The companies in the Bill O'Reilly analogy weren't trying to sink Fox News, you're right. But they also weren't pulling their advertising from Fox News. They only pulled it from one show (and subsequently moved those dollars to other shows on the network), and the result was that the show got sunk. In this situation, DFH isn't pulling their "advertising" from one section or segment of RB--they are pulling out entirely. They are doing the equivalent to pulling advertising funding from Fox News overall. And if RB lost all the brewers, the same way the O'Reilly Factor lost all it's advertisers, then RB would certainly sink as well.

 

Not that I'm aware of, but that's not particularly relevant to whether or not there were reasons for a level of trust in the first place. The failure to disclose the relationship for 9 mos. is just one additional reason for concern about the trustworthiness of the site/ratings/reviews, etc.

 

My goodness. You are in the mood today for reading a lot into a simple pointer to a suggestion as to how the RB site might be viewed as being journalistic and violating journalistic integrity.

 

But they aren't. They can't. They are only "respectfully asking" to have their reviews removed. If I had a review of a product on Amazon, and the manufacturer asked to have my review removed I would not be happy with that manufacturer despite their intentions.

 

I agree, there is a conflict of interest. And I also agree that the lack of disclosure for 8 months, followed by the disclosure only occurring involuntarily is troubling. I can certainly understand why they did it that way--concern, I imagine, over the exact reaction that is occurring now--but that doesn't make it any less problematic or, frankly, stupid. It's dumb that they believed they could keep it concealed indefinitely. They should have just ripped the band-aid off quickly when the deal was first finalized and played the PR game about how ABI's minority investment was a conflict of interest but that they had strict failsafes in place to ensure that none of their valuable user generated content would be compromised.

You know, the whole "conflict of interest doesn't necessarily indicate impropriety" song and dance.

Now, as you note, it will be harder for some users to trust the RB scoring system to remain objective in light of how they handled the investment announcement, even if there is no actual impropriety going on.

Honestly, I agree it is a smart move. Albeit an exceedingly cynical one.

How is it irrelevant? With all the hand wringing that takes place on this site about ABI's "shady business practices" how is it not relevant when the owner of a Good Guy Craft Beer brewery is seemingly engaging in some shadiness of his own? Being disingenuous about a situation in order to mold it to his own needs and benefit his own bottom line seems to be cut from the similar cloth.

 

A reading of the Zx website might suggest what ABI have to gain by creating Zx in the first place.

 

You are much more confident than I of being to read Calgione's mind as he made that post.

 

Ha. That wasn't all aimed at you. I just used your post as a stepping stone. I've heard from reliable sources that you have the gift of typing too. AB-InBev has no ownership of those sources (yet).

 

A fair point. Although there is a part of me that hopes it is cynicism rather than the fact that he actually believes the nonsense he wrote about journalistic integrity. But either way, I do not know for certain, that is true.

 

As is often mentioned when it comes to a political scandal: “The cover-up can be worse than the crime.”

I am personally not a RateBeer user but if I was the entirety of this event, both the fact that ABI has partial ownership and subsequent to this business deal there was no disclosure made, would make me decide to no longer be a user of RateBeer.

It remains to be seen how many RateBeer users make this decision.

Cheers!

 

I can see you and I agree about this is in the broader sense, but I am sticking with my take on the analogy. Both ABI and Fox will be fine despite tiny parts of their large empires being assailed by a few upset advertisers.

 

Not a rate beer user, now and certainly in the future.

 

I appreciate the sentiment but perhaps just saying Dogfish Head would no longer support RateBeer (via advertising, samples, collaboration, or whatever other means) would have been more realistic and effective.

"I ANAL" is an acronym that's new to me. Took me a minute to figure out what it was supposed to mean

 

I want to point out that the only hard facts we know about this situation are:
1) About 9 months ago ZX/ABI bought a minority stake in Rate Beer between 1%-49.9% for an unknown price
2) Rate Beer has collaborated with ZX for server space and programming assistance.
3) ZX has stated [paraphrasing] that they value Rate Beer's data for insights on consumer trends

Everything else is conjecture, much of well-thought out and rationalized, but conjecture nonetheless.

 

I'm missing something, obviously. Sam's actions hurt craft beer how?