Watched Beer Wars last night, and as it turns out, I am not alone. Netflix creates an interesting collective viewing experience. Who doesn’t have a Netflix account these days and when new movies come out we all put them into our queue… and wait for the day to watch it.

Now the Oktoberfest kicked off this weekend, what a perfect time to watch ‘Beer Wars’.

The movie documents the struggle of small entrepeneurs pinned against the evil 2-3 corporations that rule the American beer world.

It’s a fun, but simple movie with an obvious message and to be quite frank, although I dig the topic, I’m a sucker of all things food and drink related as you know, the message is a bit too obvious. Blame the government, blame the media, blame the big corporations.

Sure, as a small business owner myself, this is always the “easy-out-message”. But for the sake of the movie, I would’ve loved to have heard a few more stories of actual small brewers, entrepreneurs and connoisseurs that are fighting the good fight and bringing amazing product to the people.

The other thing I noticed in the movie is the obvious connection between marketing and product sales. Budweiser sells lots of beer during Superbowl, cause they are able to pay Millions of Dollars on advertising and the “Average Joe” sees the ad and grabs the Bud?

The movie pointed out amazingly that all the LITE beers taste the same to the average consumer and it’s all a big marketing hype. Which is interesting, as I am now 10 years in the country and I don’t think I have ever bought a Lite beer, or drank one for that matter.

Why are people so easy over here? Why is marketing so simple? Are people that gullible?

We are living in the most exciting times for small “foodie” entrepeneurs in the US. America is discovering its terroir and despite the seemingly impossible competition of the Walmarts in every category, young and driven entrepreneurs are offering up amazing and sometimes even more exciting products than their European counterparts, that often were the inspiration for many decades and still hold the gold standard for many lifestyle related products. But that standard is under attack. American producers are offering up a huge selection and an impressive quality standard on their products. That combined with very passionate fans and cool marketing should be enough to take the world by storm.

But perhaps that’s exactly the problem. A quality product, a loved, handcrafted product perhaps shouldn’t take the world by storm. Perhaps attention to detail is just not scalable.

Many of the heralded European counterparts are fiercely local. The Octoberfest only allows breweries to pour that are within the City limits and that will not ever change. Budweiser will never be served at the Oktoberfest, and neither does Dogfish. But that is exactly the point. We live in a global world, but not everything scales well.

We discovered terrior through food and farm products. It’s cool to be young and be “producing” something. Now let’s use the global tools of marketing and media to reach out local market first, rather then claiming to stay small but aiming to unseat the Budweisers of our time.

And! Here is a question for all of you: What does terrior mean to a marketing firm. No, not, how to market terroir. But are we patient enough to establish our product locally, really establish it, before we expand out into the global market place, fighting for dollar and “sense” against the big juggerauts of our society?

Below is the trailer for the movie, enjoy!