BrewDog accused of stealing others’ marketing ideas

United Kingdom | A Twitter spat has chipped away at BrewDog’s holier-than-thou image. After BrewDog launched its non-alcoholic beer, Punk AF, in early May 2019, Alex Myers of the London marketing firm Manifest took to Twitter and accused BrewDog of cribbing their idea.

Manifest used to work with BrewDog for nine years. Mr Myers alleged that together with BrewDog his team had developed the marketing strategy for the new Punk AF beer. However, Manifest was eventually told that BrewDog would choose a different route – only to see it resurface months after the agency and its client had split up.

On 9 May 2019 Mr Myers named and shamed BrewDog when he made the whole thing public and complained that “we have not been paid for it.”

In a Twitter exchange, BrewDog retorted that the new product looked completely different, while Mr Myers maintained that the idea and the branding were Manifest’s.

This made Jenny Frankart, a marketer from California, take to Twitter on 11 May, voicing her grievances over various job interviews she had with BrewDog in 2017 for a position at their brewery in Columbus, Ohio. She wrote: “ ...upon their request, submitted idea after idea, flew out for my fourth interview, with @BrewDogJames, only to be blown off. I was told I would be reimbursed for my flight, told I was the top candidate repeatedly, submitted countless ideas over five months while trying to move … only to finally be ghosted, not reimbursed, and made to feel like a fool. Horrible man. Horrible company.”

After her comments had gone viral, BrewDog’s co-founder James Watt replied to her tweet and said that it must have been due to an administrative glitch that she had not been reimbursed for her travel expenses. But the following day he sent out another tweet, wondering how she had got the idea into her mind that she could charge a company for preparing for and attending an interview?  

In the meantime, BrewDog has settled its issues with Mr Myers “amicably”.