How our Pumpclip went from social media to national news
Written by Vic Irvine of Cerne Abbas Brewery
We were invited to Parliament by local resident Baroness Jones. It was a coup to get our beer on the taps in strangers bar as usually an MP has to request it, however our beer was put forward from The House of Lords when the government was dissolved prior to the election.
We duly went along for a tour of the House of Lords and obviously a Pint of our beer in the Strangers Bar with Will the bar manager – a fantastic experience for any brewer.
It was when Andrew Griffiths MP turned up for a few pints that he noticed the fig leaf hiding the modesty of the famous Cerne Abbas Giant on our pump clip (for those that don’t know the Giant is a 180ft-tall fertility symbol, cut into the hillside above the Dorset village of Cerne Abbas, the namesake of our brewery).
Mr Griffiths promptly removed the offending fig leaf and took to twitter with a before and after shot. Within one hour I was on the balcony over looking mother Thames having one of many to come telephone interviews, which we promptly realised were being quoted directly on to the internet news feeds within minutes.
Outrageous censorship by parliament @joncraig @CerneBrewery pic.twitter.com/uAAKWVZ3hx
— Andrew Griffiths (@agriffithsmp) February 3, 2016
The following morning I gave my first “pre recorded” interview for Wessex FM and it soon became apparent that the “Government cover up” had gone viral on social media, as well as appearing on several national newspapers websites, in print in The Evening Standard for all those folk in London village, as well as the Dorset Echo and The mail in Burton on Trent.
It wasn’t until the next day whilst brewing Leggless Jester that we realised that we hadn’t actually sent a tweet. So a few photo’s were tweeted and a look at Facebook threw up a few surprises to say the least – our views per post having rose from 150-400ish to 7 and a half thousand within 12 hours!
Whilst this was a fun, tongue-in-cheek story, it has given us the opportunity to let people know what we are about – brewing good beer.
So here lies the issue: Can you brew good beer and find the time to engage with social media? Our most recent experience is persuading us you can, providing you’ve got a good story to tell.
The above is an opinion piece and not written by SIBA. If you would like to feature on this page please email neil.walker@siba.co.uk
