Chicago’s beloved Revolution Brewing recently recalled several brands of their beer. The stated problem was that the beers “exhibit ester or phenolic flavors” more typical of Belgian beers than these styles. They believe a previously undetected wild yeast is to blame and are taking steps to eradicate it from their brewery.

It’s an embarrassing, costly event for any brewery, certainly for one as established and ubiquitous as Revolution. Interestingly, in contrast with consumer products recalls, this one has nothing to do with public health or safety. These flavors aren’t going to hurt anyone. This has everything to do with protecting the Revolution brand.

Vain, you say? A massive gesture at great cost to protect their precious brand? Doesn’t it hurt their brand to admit to error?

Obviously, they’re betting that it’s better to own up to the problem than to ignore it and keep chugging along. And I think they are right for two reasons. First, quality matters for the whole beer industry. And second, admitting your mistakes shows integrity, which can actually increase customer loyalty in the long run.

Quality is not Vanity

Quality is the go-to topic whenever someone asks an industry insider about the proliferation of craft breweries. When it comes to competition for scant retail shelf space or tap handles, everyone knows that something has to give. It’s something of an item of faith that, in the long run, quality is going to make all the difference.

Quality ≠ Flavor

“Quality,” by the way, is not the same as “flavor” in this conversation. Flavor obviously varies beer to beer and drinker to drinker. I don’t like the tastes of some beers, but many of those are very successful brands. Quality has to do with the presence of “off-flavors” in a beer. Again, Revolution didn’t recall “bad” beer, just beer that didn’t fit their flavor profiles.

Quality also has to do with consistency. When you grab a Fist City, you expect it to taste a lot like the last Fist City you had. As far as I know, only the largest breweries do much blending to create really identical beers across all brewing cycles, while smaller guys are still basically brewing by the batch. However, if the equipment is clean and the process consistent, the beer will come out with a strong, nuclear-family resemblance.

Quality is Everyone’s Concern

At the recent NBWA Convention, panelists on the “Three-Tier” panel agreed that bad beer hurts everyone, not just the individual brewer. Summit Brewing quality expert Rebecca Newman spoke passionately about the importance of quality and of how poorly many places manage it. She said the standard should be allocating 15% of your budget just to quality assurance.

That’s a lot of budget for something that, to be frank, most drinkers probably don’t often pick up on. To be even franker, I’m not sure I can always pick up on it.

But the point isn’t that drinkers know when their beer is off, it’s how they act when the beer is off. Namely, they don’t drink as much beer. Revolution doesn’t want you taking a sip of Anti-Hero and looking at the glass like, “Wait, something’s funny.”

Moreover, we’re still in a period when some folks have not tried craft beers. Imagine giving an off beer to a first-timer. She drinks it, doesn’t like it, isn’t sure why, but now she has a negative association with craft beer.

And the taste instinct is powerful. She may never get over that negative association. Shoot, I got sick after eating sweet potato fries fifteen years ago, and I still can’t stomach them.

So, no, it’s not vain. It’s rather pragmatic, actually.

Admission = Integrity

The Law of Failure comes in at 19 in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Ries and Trout tell us that “failure is to be expected and accepted,” and that it’s best “to recognize failure early and cut your losses.” Most companies, they say, punish failure, so no one has incentive to point it out or admit to it.

But the money they may save by not recalling can get expensive at the more emotional level of the brand itself. Toyota learned that lesson the hard way some years ago.

Ries and Trout’s Law 15 is the Law of Candor: “When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive.” Now, they’re thinking of the way brands like Listerine turn a negative into a positive (“The taste you hate twice a day”). Revolution isn’t pushing hard on this note, but they are clearly stating that their motive is “to ensure the overall quality of our beers,” and they’re replacing the affected beer (always a better strategy than a refund).

The end result is that message to consumers is not, “We suck because we sold you bad beer.” Rather, it’s more like, “Hey, we know you love our beer, but some of it isn’t up to snuff. Bring it back and we’ll replace it with the great beer you crave.”

Consumers are people, so they know first-hand that people make mistakes. It’s not the mistakes that bother them, it’s any perceived attempt to cover up and hide those mistakes in order to “dupe an ignorant public.”

Revolution is saying, “Even if you can’t tell they’re off, we know they’re off, and we can’t accept it.” That shows integrity, and, for the consumers who even noticed or heard the news at all, it will increase their loyalty. Who wouldn’t prefer a company that’s looking out for you even when they may not have to?

Image: Steven Vance/Wikimedia Commons [CC]