Off Centered Ales and Off Centered Marketing?

I took to Twitter to find a case of listening done right. My partner and I have a joint Twitter account for our personal venture we call @BirdingnBeering. In @BirdingnBeering we bring ourselves, @SippinSiren and @QueerBirdNerd together. We follow anything we deem related to our two largest interests: Bird watching and drinking beer. As a sampling of who makes the list on this account we include breweries and pubs along with informational sites and land management agencies and conservation groups.  Such a compilation of accounts seemed the perfect place to turn for this assignment.

At first, I found myself to be quite wrong. @Greenpeace and similar ‘do-gooders’ were practically screaming their call to action. A handful of young breweries were plagued by a case of #too #many #ridiculous ##’s. I was #definitely #headshaking as a starting to speed up my scan of the feed until I saw this…

For anyone who has been west coast bound their entire existence and may not know about the pure glory of Dogfish Head Brewing, let me tell you. Dogfish Head is not only the first microbrewery I had ever visited, toured and fallen in love with. DFH, having begun their operation in 1995, is the first real microbrewing operation on the Mid-Atlantic coast to seem worth their salt. They have been on Twitter since 2008, 2 years after twitter’s inception and in that time they have 282,000 followers. This number seemed low to me to I checked out a few other popular Mid-Atl breweries.

Flying Dog, 9/2007	118,000
Heavy Seas, 5/2009	28,500
Evolution, 1/2009	8,777
Burley Oak, 6/2010	5,639

Seems DFH is building relationships just fine. Below I am showcasing an example that I was particularly drawn to. Admittedly, my Pennsylanian roots come into play here but hey, isn’t that part of building healthy relationships? Here DFH and Woolrich CLothing are a match made in heaven. Woolrich touts themselves as the original outdoor clothing company and wether Oregonians want to admit it or not, they are not the only timber working, flannel wearing folk in the country. Since I moved in Oregon 3 years ago I have made the connection time and again that Oregon is basically the west coast Pennsylvania. Dogfish Head has embodied this and put a beer to it! Dreams can come true. And since this image just encapsulated that entire story for me, of course I had to know more.

The tweet on the right included one relationship connection by adding @woolrich and one retweetable hashtag that can travel with their beer with #pennsylvaniatuxedo. They neglected to add a link to their website, which I sought out due to my own curiosity, but I believe they should have included it. Linking to http://www.dogfish.com/brewery/beer/pennsylvania-tuxedo would allow you to learn more about the beer and maybe peek interest in the long list of diverse brews you can see on the right side of the screen.

I don’t believe this was a slam dunk, but it was definitely compelling to me. I’m heading back east to visit my family in Erie, PA for the holidays and I fully intend to search out this brew. Cheers!