tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870641958407671573.post-85330143418503146322008-01-27T09:51:00.000-08:002008-01-28T01:20:26.037-08:00It can sometimes be a bit of a wilderness being a writer - you very rarely get to engage on a one-to-one basis with your readers and it's normally only when they are angry with you for some reason.<br /><br />Often it is over a perceived slight, whether real or (as is more normally the case) imaginary, tiny inaccuray or, very rarely, over a bloody great big howler you would like to commit to the voids of space.<br /><br />But, every so often, you write an opinion piece that gets a response and so far - and I'm guaranteed to be dooming myself to an absolute shit storm tomorrow - it's been good.<br /><br />You see I wrote a piece for What's Brewing? about a new femALE (geddit?!) which has been widely touted as the best thing since Lycra for the fairer sex.<br /><br />You may, or may not depending on how well you know me, be surprised to hear that whilst I don't have a problem with this per se I do have a problem with the way it has been marketed the major reasons being:<br /><ul><li>If you want to criticise the real ale market for pandering to men don't describe your figurehead female as young and attractive half-way through your press release</li><li>Don't put daisies on the glass - that makes you no better than these alleged misogynistic marketeers, there's not a lot of blokes who will drink from a glass with flowers on it - in fact who drinks Flower's these days at all?!</li><li>And finally, don't tell me that a daisy offsets the fact that you've created a handled jug - it's not feminine, I don't want to drink from it because I'm not trying to prove something, are we not over ladette syndrome yet?</li></ul><p>I will be asking editor Tom Stainer if I can reproduce the article on my blog at a later date, however, gist of it is that marketing beer to women is about NOT marketing beer to women.</p>Yeah, I know, very contradictory and there's probably blokes out there saying 'bloody typical woman' - but my point is this: why are we trying to market beer at women when we could be promoting grass-roots in pub and in-supermarket beer education at the whole damn population for a fraction of the cost that a patronising ad campaign can be put together for?!<br /><br />Sod the advertising, sod the magic bullet, and certainly sod someone putting daisies on my glass - particularly when you've put a bloody great ugly handle on the damn thing - bring on education, interest, confidence to order a beer in a strange pub and know not only that I'll like it but to send it back if I don't because it's not right!<br /><br />A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing they say - which is why I'm just smart enough to know that I want to be more educated about beer, and so do a lot of other members of both sexes.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7870641958407671573-8533014341850314632?l=girlsguidetobeer.blogspot.com'/></div>Melissa Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13701889299756506857noreply@blogger.com7