The kings of corporate cooking lager fight back

On Tuesday, I wrote about the craft beer boom and noted that the corporate giants have typically responded to the erosion of their market share "either by developing their own 'phony' craft beers or by swallowing up the microbrewers". Thanks to Ian, then, for alerting me to a third strategy: mock craft beer aficionados and brazenly boast that bigger is better. That's the approach that Budweiser have taken with their Super Bowl advert - an advert that is both laughable and lamentable.

Not only have execs since claimed, ridiculously, that it's not an attack on craft beer and more specifically those who enjoy it, but it's also hugely hypocritical, as Paste's Jim Vorel has succinctly underlined. The ad suggests that Bud isn't beer to be "fussed over" before immediately pointing out it's "beechwood aged", and also pours scorn on flavoured beers of the sort that microbrewers gobbled up by parent company AB Inbev manufacture. I think they call it shooting oneself in the foot...