Identity Politics as Marketing Material

Selling a Product by Political Identity is Bad Business and Dumber Politics

Last week, I commented how stupid Republicans were for going to war against some of America’s most loved brands, including Bud Light, Target, the NFL and Taylor Swift. It’s flat out dumb to a huge degree. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the flip side of that, using business to market political and campaign support. To be sure, Republicans don’t have a monopoly on this kind of thing, Democrats do it quite often as well. This kind of identity politics is actually just virtue signaling to a large degree. It’s amazing how online social media can become so tribal, for instance, based on whether you liked the film Barbie or not. PurpleAmerica reader RobotJim had a great take on this last week:

But what happens when politics itself informs and upstages the product? Let me introduce you to the Minocqua Brewing Company.

But first, let’s back up a little bit to discuss this kind of phenomena.

The Whole Foods/ Cracker Barrel Debate

Back in 2012, Elections Analyst and overall Politics Guru Dave Wasserman noted a strange new divide in our politics, something that can be described as the “Whole Foods/ Cracker Barrel Dichotomy.” It kind of started with a campaign gaffe; when campaigning in Iowa during the 2008 primaries, Obama had asked the crowd if anyone had been to Whole Foods to see what they charge for arugula. At the time, there wasn’t even a Whole Foods IN Iowa yet, and arugula is largely considered liberal and elitist in the same way Dr. Oz calling a veggie platter “crudite” is. Well, after the 2008 election, Wasserman looked back at the counties Obama had won and compared it to those he had lost, and then compared whether those counties had a Whole Foods or a restaurant common in red America, Cracker Barrel in it. Astonishingly enough he found a correlation. Over the years, that correlation has only gotten wider.

Why did he choose those two? I’ll let him explain.

So as our political identities have continued to become polarized and siloed, so have the brands with which we tend to associate. The stupid GOP protests over Bud Light and Target are no different from the the liberal protests over Chick Fil A and Hobby Lobby. In both cases, it’s not the products that are being protested but the politics of management. As those political psyches get entrenched, it further perpetuates the polarization and siloing and pretty soon those brands get isolated within each political tribe. In the case of Whole Foods and Cracker Barrel, Wasserman identifying this trend turned to be a boon for both; sales at both went upward as more liberals wanted to identify with Whole Foods and more conservatives wanted to identify with Cracker Barrel, both in their respective local areas. Likewise, there is an aversion of liberals to go to Cracker Barrel and conservatives to venture into Whole Foods.¹ It’s an odd place to draw a political line in the sand, yet here we are.

Since then, more and more brands are marketed specifically to cater to different political identities across the political divide, and encourage others to choose businesses based on political affiliation. For instance, here is the Minocqua Brewing Company discussing Sub Sandwich Chain Jersey Mikes.

Which brings us to…

The Minocqua Brewing Company

About 4 hours outside the Twin Cities, or an hour north of Wausau in the northwoods of Wisconsin is a small town of Minocqua. It’s a quaint and actually picturesque area of the state, home to about 4500 people. Politically, Donald Trump won the county easily in both 2016 and 2020, besting Hillary who got under 40% of the vote and Biden who barely got over it. It’s pretty backwoods. People there love their fishing, hunting, cabins, beer and the small town way of life.

In 2016, Kirk Bangstad purchased the Minocqua Brewing Company from Dan and Laurie White who had run it for 10 years. Bangstad is a Harvard Graduate (Government) and former Northwestern Grad Student (Vocal Performance).² He has since worked as a consultant, a deputy director for policy in New York, and nearly 9 years in marketing before purchasing the small town local brewery. From what I could tell, he never lived in Minocqua until he purchased the brewery. Politics and marketing seems to go hand in hand, of which he seems to know some about both.

During the 2020 campaign, he began marketing “Progressive Beer,” which were microbrews with progressive sounding names like “Biden Beer” (“Inoffensive and not bitter”) and “Inauguration Day Beer” (“A tasteful transition of flavor”). Even I will admit, the gimmick was fun and initially catchy; a very telling wink and a nod to the left. By his own admission, Bangstad has said that it alienated many of the conservatives in the very rural town, but appealed to progresssives across the country. The MBC has since parlayed this gimmick into a various line of beers including “,-la” (Kamala), “Dark Brandon Stout,” and “AOC IPA.”³ There’s also a line of ”Choice” wines and “Woke” coffees. It’s become probably the most successful politically themed beer since “Billy Beer.”⁴ Anyone who knows Minocqua would tell you, this is not just like putting a Whole Foods in Trump county, it’s trying to get Whole Foods into Cracker Barrel itself.

In reality, his market is not Minocqua, it’s progressives in other areas. He could care less about Minocqua, it’s only a name to him. For Wisconsin, his markets are Madison and Milwaukee. However, he does seem to be rolling it out elsewhere across the country as well, and has a national social media presence. Since 2021, there has also been a SuperPAC tied to the MBC, supporting liberal causes across the country, but much of it is spent in state.

How Good of a Beer is It?

Living in Minnesota and being from Wisconsin (I often go back there) has acquainted with some of the various brews. To be honest, the marketing is clever in that it may entice you to pick it up if the politics appeals to you. I would suspect it would have a much broader appeal if it weren’t confined to the very narrowness of the politics, one that happens to be getting narrower very quickly (more on that later). Of the three I tried (Biden Beer, AOC IPA and Evers Ale) I’m fine with calling them middling but not spectactular. The marketing is better and sharper than the beer is. In Wisconsin, where cheap beer is fine for most people, it probably fits right in, but catering this only to the far left of center demographic restricts their potential market. In fact, I know some who would be fine purchasing beer like this but for the names given to them. It won’t be outdoing Spotted Cow anytime soon.

What About the Politics?

The politics, however, are a whole another story. First off, the brewery has become a kind of pariah of sorts in Minocqua. Local residents aren’t too thrilled about it. This should be no surprise, since the politics of the MBC does not conform to the locality at all. Many of the more vocal customers (real or pseudo-customers who just troll) have no problem voicing their dislike for the beer and the politics associated with it; Bangstad regularly trolls them in response.⁵

In October, 2021, the SuperPAC funded a lawsuit against the Waukesha School Board for removing it’s COVID restrictions. Nevermind, Waukesha is entirely the other side of the state, it just so also happens to be the biggest REPUBLICAN area of the state. In March of 2022, it funded a lawsuit against three Wisconsin legislators (Tom Tiffany, Ron Johnson and Scott Fitzgerald) for conspiring to keep Biden off the ballot.

During the 2022 cycle, the MBC supported a Democratic carpetbagger, former 21 year CIA agent Deb McGrath, who outraised all of her opponents substantially,⁶ in the primary for an open seat being vacated by moderate Democrat Ron Kind. On their podcast and in print, they bashed Kind and the candidate he supported, former Kind staffer Brad Pfaff, as too moderate and too supportive of gun rights (never mind, it’s the most rural district won by a Democrat in the 2016 Trump election) and claiming that the more progressive McGrath was a better fit. McGrath placed third. Pfaff won the primary and made a good general election campaign of it, but lost when the DCCC moved money from it to back up flailing progressive NY Dem candidates, including one who lost to George Santos. It is now represented by MAGA candidate Derrick Van Orden. Pfaff now represents a portion of the district in the state legislature.

In October 2023, it asked the State Supreme Court to come out against the state’s school voucher program; again, this is not so much of an issue in Minocqua, it’s much more prevalent in Waukesha and the Milwaukee/Madison areas of the state. The court refused to take up the case. When the National Review asked for comment, he sent this to them:

That same month, Bangstad was found liable for defamation against Lakeland Times publisher Gregg Walker over posts on their social media. The posts claimed Walker engaged in elder abuse and may have let his 23 yr old brother bleed to death in a hunting accident. The judgment was for $750,000 and was the largest libel judgment in Wisconsin history.

As for the SuperPac, it had raised over $1 million for the 2022 cycle and one year into the 2024 cycle has raised $437k through December, 2023. In some respects, one could argue that its a Democratic SuperPAC masquerading as a Beer Company. It's been posting billboards against Republicans around the state including in Senator Ron Johnson's hometown even though he isn't up for election for another 4 years.

Conclusion

As a practical matter, the scenario is both bad business and bad politics.

It’s bad business because of its decidedly narrow focus. Sure, it may get its foot in the door and get some people to try it out of novelty, but it doesn’t really build any sense of brand loyalty, except among people who want to very visibly broadcast to everyone where their political identities lie. That’s not the sign of a good product, it’s the sign of virtue signaling.

As for the politics, I don’t know anyone who is going to like Tony Evers or AOC more just because they like a beer named after them. More to the point though, it’s bad politics because the MBC seeks to transpose the local politics of a region with values of another area very much unlike it. It’s more uber-liberals working to be provocative to those they don’t like. They're Northwoods Trolls playing to everyone in cosmopolitan liberal areas. Its the inverse of MAGA nitwits protesting in major cities. This kind of provocation is counterproductive; it makes more people oppose you than bring them into your camp.

Taking a hard left political position and dropping it into the middle of right wing world is conceptually ill-advised and convinces nobody to the worthiness of your cause. The MBC doesn’t seek to represent locals or compromise on local policy initiaitives, it seeks to impose its outsider cosmopolitan ideals on the local populace. At the same time it seeks to take it’s false rural credibility as a badge of representation as it imposes it’s liberal politics on other unrelated area of the state. This is all great for PAC fundraising but in terms of actually building policy or actually selling merchandise, it’s not smart.

In the meantime, I’m waiting for them to come out with an intentionally skunky batch and label it “The MTG Bin” to see how well it sells.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Minocqua was actually a favorite spot of 1930s Chicago gangsters Al Capone and John Dillinger. In that sense, a prohibition or bootlegger based marketing would seem much more appropriate.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

“All politics is local.”— Former Democratic Speaker Tip O’neill.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. Kind of disappointing. I've been to both and can say unequivocally that both are worthwhile, if very different, experiences.

2. I was inclined to just say “graduate” but his LinkedIn profile does not mention if he actually graduated from Northwestern or has a degree from there.

3. Of the one’s I’ve tried, the AOC IPA was the best and wasn’t that bad. Thing is, I’d be more inclined to get it again if it wasn’t praising someone I loathe.

4. Back in the late ‘70s, Jimmy Carter’s ne’er do well brother Billy marketed a beer called “Billy Beer” to capitalize on his brother being, you know, President. It was a popular novelty at the time.

5. All of these came directly from the MBC Threads page, meaning they went out of their way to broadcast their responses to each of these.

6. With much more money coming from out of state sources than in it.