You’d assume customers gravitate toward products with aspirational names, but the opposite is true for craft beer.
A new study that analyzed data from beer review site Beer Advocate between 1996 and 2012 found that when it comes to craft breweries — defined as making 6m barrels or less per year — beers with names that would typically elicit negative emotions have stronger consumer appeal.
Uh, why?
By 2012, Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors had gobbled up so many smaller brands that they controlled 90% of beer production, per The Atlantic.
Conversely, the craft beer movement — for both consumers and brewers — flew against mass production and was instead “steeped in authenticity,” University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor Olga Khessina told The Hustle.
- Khessina co-authored the study alongside J. Cameron Verhaal (Tulane University) and Stanislav D. Dobrev (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee).
And when brewers come out with offerings like Ugly Pug or I Hate My Boss Coffee Stout, those names reflect that independence — which Khessina’s research indicates may be even more important than how the beer tastes.
Does this translate to other industries?
There are wines and spirits with weird names — take Cat Pee on a Gooseberry Bush Sauvignon Blanc or Dirty Water Distillery’s Bog Monster gin — but Khessina said it’s not as common.
Those craft movements started later and have yet to reach the same scale as beer.
What about cannabis…
… where strains have names like “unicorn poop” or “grandpa’s breath”?
Sure, because both have ideologies in opposition to something, Khessina said. For craft beer, it’s mass production; cannabis remains federally illegal.
“Strong oppositional identity demands authenticity in expression and behavior and encourages rebellious (i.e., counter-normative) attitudes and actions with which negative naming of products strongly resonates,” Khessina said.
Hear that, rebels? Enjoy your Ill-Tempered Gnomes and Geriatric Hipster Clubs this weekend. For nondrinkers, there’s always Liquid Death, the canned water brand that grew its revenue by 4,000%+ by branding itself like a craft beer.
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