Jealousy

The human race is a complicated beast, full of rich diversity; and yet there are some traits that are common across all members of the species.  One is a desire for success, no-one wishes to be a failure.  Curiously, despite this desire for personal achievement, there is also a collective belief that success at an organisational level (at least one that we do not ‘belong’ to), is a truly unpalatable thing; and it seems that the bigger and more successful the company, the more we love to hate it.

 

Such behaviours were recently observable in the great Diageo vs Brewdog battle. Diageo (a multinational drinks corporation) had sponsored an awards ceremony in which Brewdog (a relatively small beer producer) had been chosen as winner of the ‘best bar operator’ award. When the award came to be announced, much to the amazement of the judges, it was another company’s name that was read out.  It turns out that a Diageo employee had told the event organizers that if they did not stop Brewdog from receiving the award, then Diageo would withdraw all future sponsorship.

On the face of it this is an extraordinary example of bribery, but the interesting bit is what happened next. Despite being a relatively small outfit Brewdog have always been pretty PR savvy and quickly set about milking the situation to its full potential.  Diageo relatively quickly apologized, explaining the decision was not one the company supported, and was in fact that of a single employee. Things really should have settled down at this stage; the error had been admitted and an apology given. Except that neither Brewdog, nor the public and media observers of this charade could let it go, and all manner of fuss was made of this being an example of corporate bullying.

 

But it probably wasn’t. There is no evidence that this was anything other than a monumental individual error. I can’t help but think that if this was an employee of a smaller company that had made the error, there just wouldn’t have been a story.  In fact, it might even be questioned whether there was an understandable reason behind the Diageo employees’ decision considering the thoroughly unpleasant nature of the subsequent behaviour of Brewdog employees.  Of course Brewdog wished to create as much public furore as possible, but one has to question whether it was really necessary to describe Diageo as “dishonest hammerheads” and “dumb ass corporate freaks”. Unsubstantiated claims that the decision was a tactic commonly employed by large corporations, and even the amusingly daft suggestion that Diageo felt threatened by Brewdog, were thrown around.

 

The most concerning thing however, was the way in which the media and the public at large lapped it up. It is inconceivable that if the two positions were reserved, there would be so much support for Diageo. It is worrying that so many people love to hate the big guys, that they will ignore the facts of the case. Why, I guess I’ll never know, but jealousy is most certainly an unattractive trait of the human race.

 

The Cocktail Geek