A Position Needs Neighbors

Twenty-four beers, twenty-four days, and a bouncer at the door who never lets the same brewery in twice.

That’s the GBB advent calendar. This was its fifth year, and it sold out. We didn’t invent the idea, either. Beer advent calendars turn up everywhere once November hits, which is exactly why ours works. A countdown made of beer needs no tutorial. Somebody else paid to teach that lesson years ago, and a shelf full of other boxes keeps teaching it for free. So our one rule (no repeat breweries) does a lot of talking, but only to someone who has worked through a few of the others.

In an empty market you don’t have a position. You have an address.

Different is a comparison, and a comparison needs weight on the other side of the scale. A crowded market hands you that weight at no charge. It hands you the noise too, which is better than it sounds, because a full room is already arguing out loud about what it wishes somebody would do. (Best place in the world to eavesdrop, too. I do it in my own bar, no logo shirt, whenever I can.)

The trap is raising the bar the crowd is already staring at. Everyone in a busy category watches the same scoreboard, so one more tap or one more feature vanishes into the din. The crowd agrees on what counts. It also agrees, without ever saying so, on what doesn’t. That second list is where the bar is lying on the floor, waiting for somebody to pick it up and hang it higher.

In a beer town the obvious scoreboard is the tap list. The hands doing the pouring never make it onto the board, which is why every beertender behind our bar is Cicerone certified. A tap list can be copied by Friday. A team has to be built.

So when somebody calls a market too crowded, listen to what they actually said. The buyer is already educated. The bar is already posted where everyone can read it. And a dozen competitors have spent real money building the contrast you get to stand next to.

You can’t stand out in an empty room. You can only stand.

Stay Positive & Crowded Market? Great!