Did it ever. "Wasatch Brewery needs to understand that there is more than one local religion that considers the association of alcohol with religion and the ordinance of baptism to be an open act of disrespect," wrote one Utah resident to the Deseret News. Some residents wanted the billboard ad removed. Schirf and Kirwin were thrilled. "The talk-radio people were all over it," says Schirf. Sales soared. Schirf and Kirwin, buoyed by the campaign's success, didn't simply stand up to their detractors; during the next two years they actually upped the ante. As Schirf's annual advertising budget grew from $25,000 to $125,000, so did his chutzpah.
Kirwin, who is less cavalier than Schirf about Wasatch's tactics, says, "We're definitely walking the line between being a smart-ass and a dumb-ass." He adds, "The secret to this [kind of advertising] is that you can have some fun with cultures and the way people act. What you don't want to do is start making fun of people's deeply held beliefs." But one might argue that that's exactly what Schirf did last fall. He renamed one of his beers Polygamy Porter (tag line: "Why have just one?") and labeled it with an illustration of a scantily clothed man surrounded by a six-pack of wives. Even Kirwin bristled. And Schirf didn't stop there. Pushing the limits even further, he had billboard ads designed for the dubiously named beer.
According to Schirf, billboards mocking polygamy were just too much for the Utah Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, which last October declared a ban on using religious themes in alcohol advertising. Earl Dorius, compliance manager at the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, says the ban's timing was coincidental. "[Schirf] didn't trigger it, even though he'd like to think he did," says Dorius. In fact, he says, the state commission rescinded its ban when it realized that it had inadvertently outlawed the advertising of kosher and sacramental wine and alcohol produced by monks.
Nonetheless, the controversy rattled Reagan Outdoor Advertising, Wasatch's billboard company, which refused to display the Polygamy Porter ad. A less aggressive entrepreneur might have pulled his punches at that point. But not Schirf, who searched for a less conservative billboard-advertising vendor. This time the local media had international company: The Economist, the Associated Press, and the BBC jumped on the controversy.
The fracas was great for business. Wasatch's Web site, which typically generated $2,000 a month in sales, racked up $55,000 in November, mostly through sales of Polygamy Porter T-shirts. And porter sales rose from 800 cases in October to 1,900 in December. "And that's as much beer as we could get into the marketplace," says Schirf. Sales of other Wasatch brews spiked as well. The story of the kiboshed billboard won the attention of beer distributors in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming -- and, says Schirf, "it looks like we're going to expand to those areas."
Schirf estimates that his technique has helped earn Utah Brewers Cooperative 60% of the microbrew market in Utah (a figure nearly impossible to verify). But it's clearly not the only technique that works. His biggest local competitor, Uinta Brewing Co., positions itself as an environmentally conscious company that uses Utah themes for its beer names. Schirf, whose beer revenues grew 32% from 2000 to 2001, will stick with what works. In fact, his various antics generated some terrific results for Wasatch during the winter Olympics. "February was the best month we've ever had," says Schirf. "The weather cooperated, the terrorists cooperated, and it was a real sophisticated beer-drinking crowd, which was great for us and bad for Budweiser. We were sold in the same tent as they were, and we could tell by the lines that we outsold them two to one." Indeed, Wasatch's brewpub sales for February 2002 were $489,000, up from $242,422 the previous year.
"What's next?" people often ask him. "And is it going to make me laugh?" Well, probably. Or it'll make you furious. It's all money in the bank to Schirf.
Donna Fenn is a contributing editor at Inc.
Schirf on Getting Publicity
- Make people laugh and be willing to laugh at yourself.
- Be edgy and irreverent without being irresponsible and going over the line of bad taste.
- Play up the David vs. Goliath angle big time.
- Create advertising that also generates news coverage to releverage your media buy. (Says Schirf, "We did a $10,000 media buy for Polygamy Porter, but we probably got another $200,000 worth of media coverage.")
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