The last time I’m writing about women in beer, part 3 of 4: Selling beer to women and other humans

Part 1: disclaimers and the customer is not always right
Part 2: Stop congratulating me for having ovaries

I’m sometimes asked how we can get more women to drink beer. I say all we really have to do is stay out of the way and it will happen on its own over time. No one finds this answer satisfying but I stand by it. In general, younger woman already take beer over other booze but there is no quick fix that will make every woman (or every man) a beer fan. That isn’t stopping marketers of both genders from trying, though, because they want every woman’s money now now now.

Pandering isn’t going to work
Much like the poor confused souls who think there is something inherently feminine about Belgian yeast or SRMs less than 7, there are people in corporate who see the gender imbalance in beer consumption as a marketing failure rather than what it is — a cultural relic that will fade over time with beer education, exposure to female beer enthusiasts, and changing attitudes overall.

Every product in history has probably been marketed in a ridiculous way by suits who Just Don’t Get It, and beer is no exception. It’s the product some of us know best, though, so we notice. You can google for five seconds and find many enthusiastic and 100% accurate rants against companies that try to market beer to women by giving it names like “Chick Beer” and making it low-calorie, flavorless, and/or ACTUALLY PINK. If you think this approach is a good idea I’m not sure what you’re doing reading a beer blog, so I won’t reinvent that wheel here. But I’ll say this one more time:

The problem, of course, being that those women are probably not enjoying life very much. They’re definitely not enjoying very much beer or interesting food. Alas, we can’t convince every woman (or man) alive that there’s more to life than the perfect body, so there will always be people of both genders who drink terrible lite beer or no beer to save calories. It’s encouraging, at least, that the “beer for women” brands tend to crash and burn.

Cartoon ta-tas aren’t going to work either
I can’t tell you how to sell beer to women, but I can tell you how to NOT sell beer to women, and that’s to create the beer label equivalent of booth babes. I could cite many examples, including some made by breweries and brewers I really like, but let’s embarrass this random Delaware brewery instead:

Actually, that one’s not so bad in the grand scheme of things. How about some tig ol’ bitties?

Huh huh Beavis. They’re talking about her thingies.

I’m not offended per se by boob jokes, but it makes the brand seem behind-the-times by implying that beer is just for (straight) men. Or middle school boys, or whoever this is supposed to be for.

As I’ve joked before…

To sum up, here’s how to sell beer to women (or anyone) in 3 easy steps:

1. Make beer that tastes good.
2. Market in a way that doesn’t insult anybody or make you look 12.
3. Wait.

Next, the final installment: why IS beer so male? I don’t know. And it’s not.

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