Authenticity & the Craft of Brewing Beer
Every now and again you discover something well ahead of the general public that is worthy of further investigation. That is the key advantage of being a futurist – you get to spend a lot of your time just looking for signals of change. In this case it is the soon to be opened Barleycorn Brewers in Huntingdale, Victoria. A professional brewery for the public, Barleycorn Brewers provide the budding Brew-Master, home brewer and anyone else interested with the chance to create, can or bottle, and then drink their very own beer. The significance of this concept is the way it ties in with the emerging shifts in consumer sentiment that is seeing the rejection of ‘Brands’ and an increasing search for ‘authenticity’ which will require a major shift in the way products and services are pushed to the marketplace. It is something I have been suggesting to organisations for quite a while now
As a futurist I am seeing more consumers in a search for authenticity are looking for a complete understanding of the way in which a product is made, the inputs for the products, the processes used in the manufacture of those products (or delivery of services) and the values of the company providing them.
Arguably emerging from the awareness of the ‘slave labour’ and sweat shop practises of some companies in certain nations with a less established employment policies, authenticity is a move away from the mass produced one size fits all model, to one in which the ‘realness’ of a product is placed under the spotlight.
From clothing to pottery to artworks and music to food and beverages, companies that become aware of the consumer sentiment for authenticity tend to embrace accurate product labelling, policies around human rights and environmental issues and an awareness of the increasingly active involvement of consumers in terms of their product selection processes.
Barleycorn Brewers in Huntingdale is a fine example that allows the home brewer or interested person to control the entire process and it is hard to get much more authentic than allowing someone to handle the ingredients, select the recipe, brew and then drink their own beer, all with complete knowledge of the process, ingredients and taste and knowing that there are no preservatives or additives. Barleycorn are certainly not the first company to move into the space and they are unlikely to be the last. And looking at one of Australia’s fastest growing hobbies, it’s an approach likely to generate significant interest. Cheers!
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will meet with eminent ABC radio presenter Jon Faine on Wednesday the 16th of April to discuss the outcomes of the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on the weekend With a focus on the future of Australia it would be only natural…
Read More >A group of leading Australian Futurists gathered over the weekend to consider the 10 core themes set to be tackled at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra in April. Convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber, the 2020 Australia Futurists Summit utilised some of the advanced facilitation and strategy development techniques as a…
Read More >As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields…
Read More >A few thoughts on what steps could be taken to overcome the ‘treat everyone like a nail’ approach that Interest Rate rises seems to do. Check out the idea under the ‘Latest Focus’ section Interest Rate Rises are going to penalise too many people who don’t deserve to lose their homes
Read More >Marcus Barber offers his thoughts on How to Stop Japanese Whaling in its Tracks and suggests that raiding boats won’t do the job. Instead he suggests that the key to negotiating with the Japanese is to have the Japanese people do the work. And to encourage them to do so we must begin to talk…
Read More >If an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ raised the profile of global warming to the general population, it appears that a willingness by political leaders to take appropriate action to mitigate the possible ramifications is still very much lacking. It is such a pity. No one who holds the Global Warming scenario close to heart wants to be…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
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