Gimmicks - good or bad?

One persons gimmick is another's joke or idea of poking fun.

Take the beers or leave them. But taking naming personally is a waste of your valuable time.

With hundreds of thousands of beers out there somebody has to name them somehow.

 

I have been voting with my wallet that I am not a big fan of these beers but I understand it as a great opportunity for a brewery to reach a new audience. There is a certain sense of happiness seeing people who don't drink a lot of craft beer, grabbing a bottle of GOT beer before the season opener.

Yeah it is probably over saturated at this point but hey, I think collaborations are equally as gimmicky (for the most part).

 

I don't think a gimmick is ever a good thing. By definition I'd say it's a negative. The fact that a brewery may be successful or not (in terms of sales) with that particular gimmick is another matter.

It's something that frustrates me about the beer scene. Craft beer wants to be taken seriously, but do you see a Springbank GOT whisky or a Chateau La Nerthe Ghostbusters wine?

 

Depends a bit on the quality of the actual product imo. If the beer is at least decent then I'm inclined to be more "okay with it," depending on the brewery too. Generally speaking my expectations are low and I tend to ignore them.

Holy Grail Pale Ale comes to mind as a somewhat gimmicky beer but, in my opinion, it's good enough that I've bought it more than once and it's a pretty traditional English Pale Ale so it does hold some relevance to Monty Python at least in that regard. The "Iron Maiden" one comes to mind as a similar example, but a worse beer. Bit of a shame to sign a deal that gives both parties a good amount of advertising to have the end product be sub-par.

I think the "Wheaties" one lately is a little more annoying, since it has nothing to do with the actual Wheaties product and is just an American wheat beer with a Wheaties logo on the can - purely gimmicky advertising and in my opinion a missed opportunity to at least incorporate the product, use the cereal in the mash, whatever.

 

Tie-in gimmicks can be cool, but generally are just that: gimmicks. I've never seen one that I felt particularly compelled to buy just for the tie-in because at the end of the day I only care about what the beer itself tastes like. I have bought music-linked ones, though, such as Three Floyds Permanent Funeral (Pig Destroyer), Three Floyds Evil Power (Lair of the Minotaur), Three Floyds Toxic Revolution (Municipal Waste), Dogfish Head Bitches Brew (Miles Davis), and Dogfish Head Hellhound on My Ale (Robert Johnson); those are all good beers in their own right, and that's why I initially purchased them.

Gimmicks like adding weird ingredients to beers are not nearly as annoying to me. I actually dislike it when people call those beers gimmicky because if it weren't for breweries testing the boundaries of beer there would be no advancement. Those gimmicks give us great new beers through trial and error. I'm sure bourbon barrel aging was considered a gimmick at one time. I bet tossing cinnamon and chilies into a stout was thought of as a gimmick too. We need things like that to be made to advance beer as a whole, though.

 

What about all of the "cheesy" or potentially "gimmicky" names that craft brewers call their beers? One could argue that would have just as much negative connotation.

 

Those type of tie in's are not geared for their regular customers. It is to gain new customers that are fans of the other company. So as beer geeks we would not buy it for the beer, but those that like that brewery have been made aware of the other company. The beer company gets exposure to the Ghostbuster or Game of Thrones fans. It seems to be a win win as long as the beer is ok. If a beer company is making a bad beer for their tie ins they probably do not make very good beer anyway so again no harm if they go out of business.

 

Absolutely. All that crap too. I'm just answering OP directly with the GOT/GB references, but yes away with all of that please

 

There's nothing gimmicky in the DNA of Tired Hands from what I could see when I visited, so I'd venture a guess that it was possibly in homage to something one of those guys found cool, either the movie or the Hi-C drink. The fact that there is a remake coming out probably inspired the idea, but I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a gimmicky move on their part, especially since it sounds like a one off.

Breweries have been taking advantage of innuendo, double entendre, tongue in cheek humor and pop culture icons and themes for a long while, nothing gimmicky about it. The ideas seem far more organic and less about marketing to a certain sensibility. These guys (brewers in general) come from the same walks of life as the rest of us, so it's reasonable to believe they enjoy the same humor and such. The difference in us and them is that they have a creative outlet to express their interests, whereas we don't. If I had a brewery, I'd have all sorts of beer names that represented stuff I liked and I wouldn't see it as gimmicky at all.

 

Not to nitpick your post but where are you getting the "geek community is split" on this? Or are you asking if the "geek community" is split? Or announcing you feel torn on this? Who are the sides you are talking about?

 

Can't blame companies for trying different ways of selling their products that have worked for other products. Trouble is, though, that for products such as fine beer, gimmicky advertising can lead the consumer to believe the product cannot stand on its own merits.

For instance I never would have bought this, but someone turned me onto it and it was quite tasty.

 

Actually I think gimmicks are loved by the BA community. The dispute is over what counts as a gimmick.

 

Do I love Game of Thrones? Heck yes I do. Do I love Lord of the Rings? Absolutely. Is Ghostbusters a cult classic? You're damn right it is.

Do any of these movies need to have a beer named after them? Not a chance.

I lose a little respect for any brewery that decides to come out with one of these gimmick beers. I just see it as a desperate attempt for attention and ultimately a silly endeavor. Could the beer with one of these labels be a great beer? Sure, but with so many other great beers out there I don't plan on wasting my money on an overpriced and over commercialized beer.

 

At first I thought you were totally right, but then I wondered if beer is in a better position due to something crass popping up and dragging it down. It's nice to have checks and balances.

 

While I agree with this sentiment mostly (we do need to test new things in order to advance beer), you can't tell me that this beer is not a gimmick.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/986/91838/

 

Haha, The BA version of it tasted just like bourbon. I didn't taste any testicle at all.

 

I'l just leave out notice that the OP has rubber duckies as their user image. That kind of neatly summarizes why beer can do these things.