Rudeness Promotes Beer

Some twenty years ago in Russia (the USSR) simply getting into a bar to drink beer was an excruciating process. In Moscow I had to stay almost two hours in a line to get into the Zhiguli bar at the Kalinin Street. The bar was huge but inside it was always crowded, stuffy and smoky. Waiters there were not just rude – they were the Rudeness World Championship finals. Real heavyweights. When they brought you beer and flung it over your table, you had to be extra thankful that they brought you that watery stuff at all. If you said that there was too much foam, a Zhiguli bar waiter would become really mad. “What? Why on earth should I care about the foam? I have more important things to do. There are too many of you here but I’m only one.”

Hoegaarden Beer now tries to promote its brand using this old good Russian rudeness. This Internet ad banner goes, “Why on earth should we filter our beer? There are things more important than filtering.” The point of this ad is that Hoergaarden beer is not filtered and unfiltered beer tastes better. I personally don’t think that unfiltered beer is better. It’s just different.

Anyway I was curious why Hoergaarden thinks I should filter their beer myself. The ad link brought me to the page where they first asked me if I’m older than 18 (one link) or younger (another link). I thought they don’t want kids to be engulfed in a torrent of invectives on the topic, “How dare you asked us to do your filtering job”. On the contrary, they asked me politely to participate in a promo campaign and win a case of beer. I brusquely refused.