This would only be truely anti-establishment, if multiple companies were doing it using the same brand without any brand protection.<p>Lack of branding is still a brand...
"I might add: what thus seems to take place outside ideology (to be precise, in the street), in reality takes place in ideology. What really takes place in ideology seems therefore to take place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological’. It is necessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptional case) or (the general case): I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself (unless one is really a Spinozist or a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the same thing). Which amounts to saying that ideology has no outside (for itself), but at the same time that it is nothing but outside (for science and reality)."<p>- Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
<a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/id...</a>
These are also quite well-known in Germany: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/baRUVan.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/baRUVan.jpg</a> (5.0 is the percentage of alcohol)
Of course, that becomes just another brand gimmick, right?<p>It would be interesting to see what would happen if another company started using the same packaging to make a clearly inferior (or even just different) beer.<p>Last thought: reminds me of repo man (the one from the 80s), a great movie you should probably go watch right now, I mean come on, it's Sunday, relax.
It's a concept that's been done before: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/wteBl.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/wteBl.jpg</a>
Reminds me of the movie "Repo Man." Harry Dean Stanton says "let's go get a drink." They go into a quick mart and they find six packs of white cans labeled "Drink" and that's it.
In your average German bar you have maybe 2-3 choices of beer. In the south you say 'zwei mal helles', the north 'zwei mal pils' but throughout 'zwei mal bier'.<p>bier bier is around 3.50 in a club, so 0.20 more than the next pils, you pay for your laziness.<p>('mal' meaning 'times' is used instead of a plural)
As an American living in Berlin: thank you for posting this! I always wondered what the deal was with "BIER". I'd assumed it was some kind of home-brewed concoction. I guess I'll give it a try now.
Meh. Maybe this is an American/California thing but at the bar or supermarket there are 100s of possible brands of beer, many of which incorporate different ingredients and brewing processes that will have profound effects on flavor (and physiological effect). One utility of a brand to me as a beer drinker is to help me remember which Imperial stout was too chocolatey or which IPA had an enjoyable hoppy taste.<p>On the other hand I could see the point of this for the huge domestic American brands e.g. Coors, Miller, Budweiser, etc.
Back in the late 1970s, one saw "generic" products in the store--the movie "Repo Man" has some allusions to this. I remember my folks buying "Generic" beer; I took it, from the shape of the bottles, to be Falstaff. But that may have been the case only with the supermarket chain where they shopped.
Meh, Quartiermeister is more fun — selling beer to fund community projects: <a href="http://www.quartiermeister.org/en/" rel="nofollow">http://www.quartiermeister.org/en/</a>