The Great Northern Beer Boycott

Before we dive into the story; I wanted to start by saying a very big thank you for jumping into this journey with nothing more than a Linkedin post to go on! I’m so excited to be building this community with you, helping us all build our impact-making muscle wherever our lives might take us.

Ok, let’s do it.

The Great Northern Beer Boycott has been all over the news, but in case you missed it, or are still 80% in holiday mode, let’s start from the beginning.

The Recap

Last month, Great Northern, simultaneously Australia’s highest selling and least enjoyable beer, launched a campaign called “Outdoors for a Cause”, aiming to raise funds to expand National Park land in Australia. What could go wrong?

Plenty, it turns out.

The campaign quickly faced backlash from Great Northern’s core audience; think boating, camping, fishing (did you read it to the tune too?)… who were smashing cans like it was Bud-Lite-Gate all over again.

The media piled on, the campaign shifted to endangered animals, then was axed after raising just a few grand. Last week, the CEO stepped down; although, despite the headlines, that decision was actually made last year (a detail conveniently missing from the headlines below).

The Breakdown

‘Go Woke, Go Broke’ - the catch cry of a certain world leader with an obsession for Greenland and dancing to YMCA.

In Australia it was thought to have been singlehandedly vanquished by Pat Cummins (more on that another time). But, this time, that ‘woke’ tag proved too much for the media to resist.

If you saw headlines like these, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a classic tale of fair-dinkum Aussie blokes raging against greenie causes. 

🎶tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, bushies and elites.🎶

Media commentators fanned those flames - desperate to connect this moment with the enduring Bud Lite controversy - whose use and subsequent removal of a transgender influencer cost the company $1.4 billion in sales from consumers on both sides of that divide.

But in reality; when you dig down, both the boycott organisers and campaign advocates believe that environmental protection is their ‘primary motivation’ The real issue? A good old-fashioned, and literal, turf war over what you can and can’t do in State vs National Parks - namely, hunting, fishing and free camping.

In the words of boycott organiser and former Freedom Party candidate, Leonie Blackwell; 'A lot of people didn't know the difference between a state park, a national park, and state forests. So [Great Northern] probably just didn't realise...Not everybody can be all over everything.'

If we put ourselves in the shoes (but never the tastebuds) of a Great Northern customer, what they heard was their favourite beer brand saying: ‘you know those hobbies you have? The ones we bonded over, and showed back to you on our ads? Well that case you just bought is helping buy up land where you could do those hobbies, and stopping it’ - there’s no wonder the project tanked so badly.

To get a better handle on it, I even dove deep into one of the boycott leader’s, 4WD TV, Facebook page so you don’t have to (seriously, where’s my Walkley?). Posts, comments - you name it. This exchange sums up the vibe from both sides perfectly.

Now, like me, you might have seen these headlines and made a bunch of assumptions about the boycott brigade - but while it’s far easier to imagine people you disagree with are motivated by bad will; the reality is both sides of this story are closer than we might have thought - and, are actually offering a window into the shared motivations we can harness to find common ground for the benefit of our environment.

The Lesson

In the end, this isn’t a story about outdoorsy, beer-drinking blokes not caring about the environment. Nor is it a cautionary tale for companies to avoid impact campaigns altogether - all indications are that launching with a campaign attached to generalised conservation would have succeeded (more on that in a second).

Instead, this is a story about a company with a good handle on its brand intention, and its consumer data - that knows the power of an impact campaign for brand building - mismatching those well-developed business capabilities with a limited impact capability, leaving them, their non-profit partner, and us impact professionals to pick up the pieces.

Quite simply, they didn’t interrogate the intended, and unintended consequences of the impact solution they were supporting through the lens of their key audience demographic.

After all, if impact is part of your brand strategy, it needs to be resourced with both funding and expertise if it is to succeed for the brand.

The good news? It is entirely possible to run a clear, meaningful and mutually beneficial impact campaign that reaches beer drinkers - even those that hunt and fish.

How do we know?

Because in the same month this was happening, Australia’s second most popular beer, XXXX launched a limited edition beer to the same audience, alongside a campaign to ‘restore vital seagrass meadows that fish, turtles and dugongs of the reef call home,’ continuing their years long, multi-million dollar partnership with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

Now, that’s something we can all raise a glass to.

Cheers🍻

Tim