Flying Dog Brewery (Frederick, MD) may have made a misstep in their social media campaign kickoff yesterday. The brewery kicked off a new campaign called “Swallow the Truth” coinciding with their new “The Truth” imperial IPA. It all started with this image posted above – “Not brewed at our Asheville brewery…because we don’t have one.”
That’s the problem with digital sarcasm. It can be easily overlooked. We’re pretty sure it was a simple joke about the fact that so many breweries are building in Asheville/North Carolina. Within seconds of posting this art, the pushback started. Forcing a tongue-in-check reply on their Facebook page. Seems like even beer drinkers get offended fairly easily.
We are releasing a new Imperial IPA called The Truth.
What appealed to us about this concept of the truth is that as a society, we are constantly blasted with hype, lies, and exaggerations. And we’re expected to swallow it as the truth.
What we learned today is that an inarguable truth was reacted to in very subjective ways.
In one simple statement, we managed to offend the following:
A. North Carolina beer
B. Breweries already in, moving to, or expanding to North Carolina
C. The entire state of North Carolina
D. And probably people who live in South Carolina, but work in North Carolina
If you were offended by Flying Dog today and are not included in the list above, please let us know.
Then this –
I think the whole dang thing is pretty funny! I like David Stoudt’s response!
yeah, all those people that got offended? They can go to hell. It’s just beer.