James Watt, boss of embattled British brewer Brewdog has admitted he made “some costly mistakes” in a promotion which offered people the chance to win a gold can hidden in cases of beer in 2021.
Watt’s Willy Wonka-esque stunt backfired after some of the gilded can winners discovered that they were gold-plated and questioned their value.
The Brewdog supremo said that he “misunderstood the process of how they were made” and made a “silly mistake” by telling customers in the initial promotional tweets that the cans were hewn from “solid gold.”
“All in all, it ended up costing me around £470,000 – well over 2 and a half years’ salary,” Watt wrote.
Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld complaints from 25 of the winners that three of the adverts used in the campaign were misleading. In its ruling, the watchdog said it “understood the prize consisted of 24 carat gold-plated replica cans,” but added “because the ads stated that the prize included a solid gold can when that was not the case, we concluded the ads were misleading.”
As well as complaints concerning the prize’s authenticity, some of the winners questioned how much the can was worth. Brewdog said the gold-plated cans wold be worth £15,000 — around $26,000.
However, the ASA said that Brewdog told investigators a single 330ml can, made with the equivalent 330ml of pure gold, would have a gold value of about £363,000 (over $600,000) at the time in October 2021.
To Brewdog and Watt’s chagrin, the ASA maintained that a general audience would be unaware of the price of gold and “how that would translate into the price of a gold can, and whether that was inconsistent with the valuation as stated in the ad.”
In his LinkedIn post over the weekend, Watt said that his £15,000 was accurate.
Brewdog is no stranger to controversy surrounding its advertising campaigns. Last year, the firm branded itself an “anti-sponsor” of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar and said that it would be donating the profits from sales of its Lost Lager to charities. However, it would continue to show games in its pubs.
