Meet the President: Jim Koch triggers scandal for the social media age
Jim Koch, the founder of Boston Beer, picked a side in America’s political wars when he accepted an invitation by President Trump to an elite gathering of a dozen or so industry bigwigs on 7 August 2018. The reason we know is because on the following day various media outfits posted a video of Mr Koch’s impromptu dinner speech on Facebook.
Here is a link: The Boston Globe
What did Mr Koch say? All he said was that President Trump’s tax reform was “a very big deal” for American brewers, who were not operating on a “level playing field” with foreign-owned breweries.
“I mean, Americans – I’m the largest American-owned brewery at 2 percent market share. We were paying 38-percent taxes … and competing against people who were paying 20. And now we have a level playing field, and we’re going to kick their a**,” Mr Koch said, according to a White House transcript.
You cannot fault Mr Koch, a businessman after all, for appreciating a tax reform which is to his and other brewers’ benefit. What the self-appointed/self-anointed commentariat took offence to was Mr Koch’s acceptance of an invitation to meet the President. It was Mr Koch’s presence at the dinner which caused the scandal.
The backlash was swift. Boycotts were threatened from all and sundry including the Democratic mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, Joseph Curtatone, a vocal critic of Mr Trump’s immigration policies, who vowed never to drink Sam Adams’ beers again.
Did Mr Koch know what he was doing? I would presume so. Because the reaction followed a predictable arc for the social media age: a provocative move sparks denunciation from one side and loud approval from the other.
Funnily, with all the noise no one picked up on the economics of the scandal. A 70 second video gave Boston Beer free advertising worth millions of dollars.
However, firms intent on playing the social media outrage game – viz Nike’s recent tweet featuring the black athlete Colin Kaepernick – need to bear one thing in mind. They may only antagonise those consumers who do not buy their products. Then everything will be fine.
True, in Mr Koch’s case, there was no effusive praise. But one should not rule out quiet consent. After all, there is still a cohort of consumers out there, the silent majority of 60 percent of Americans, who drink mass market beers and legacy craft beer brands like Sam Adams when they feel like it. Having long lost hardcore craft beer drinkers, it was to the gallery of regular Americans that Mr Koch played.
By the way, Mr Koch’s appraisal of Mr Trump’s tax reform is shared by thousands of craft brewers. There were loud cheers from the audience at the 2018 Craft Brewers Conference following the BA’s announcement that the tax relief will deliver USD 71 million collectively in annual savings to the craft brewing industry.
