It’s time to say “no”

As the 2022 football (soccer) World Cup in Qatar loomed, a UK mid-cap beer manufacturer went on the offensive. Confused? So was I.

BrewDog does excellent work on sustainability. It’s the first carbon-negative brewery, is on track to minimise/capture waster water, and is 99% plastic-free. Then came a stroppy campaign about being an “anti-sponsor” of the World Cup because of Qatar’s human rights record (image below, and more here). A few problems:

🚦 BrewDog saying it wouldn’t sponsor the World Cup is like me saying I’m boycotting COP24 – no one cares; I wasn’t invited. Heineken was the sponsor, and beer was banned from stadiums anyway.

🚦 BrewDog saying they’d donate all revenue from sales of their “Lost” beer during the World Cup to human rights charities is laudable. If human rights is a genuine BrewDog priority, might efforts be better spent on those more immediately impacted by BrewDog (e.g., domestic abuse x alcohol abuse, modern slavery in agricultural harvesting, bauxite miners supplying aluminium factory workers, safety issues in wind turbine installation/maintenance/disposal, miners sourcing rare metals for EVs, etc., etc.)?

🚦 BrewDog did sell beer in Qatar via distributors and the duty-free agency. One must assume the workers who built the airport were treated better than those building stadia.

As I understand from “well-placed sources,” BrewDog’s executives are quite dominant (with good and bad results). Someone should have said “no” when the CEO went off on one about Qatar. Why?

It ended up being an unwelcome distraction from much good work being done elsewhere. BrewDog were soon being lampooned for this ill-thought-through stance. This included articles revealing the duty-free link and that BrewDog would screen World Cup matches at their restaurants/pubs.

This case study is an excellent example of when to say “no.” When it is a distraction and/or would risk derailing something more critical. It’s a regular tension I see in-house risk, compliance, and sustainability people face. “Can you spend weeks on a performative statement to make the board look good and drop that important work building the Ethics Ambassador program?”

Speaking truth to power is seldom easy. But something is wrong if we can’t say no when it might cause more good than harm. How you deliver the “I could do X, but then Y would happen” message will differ depending on the audience, but data usually helps. So does having a clear strategy and purpose for risk and sustainability.