BrewDog boss pays out £500,000 over gold can claim

The boss of BrewDog has said he has paid out almost £500,000 to the winners of the company’s misleading gold can promotion.

James Watt said he had made some “costly mistakes” and his tweets about the campaign had caused “a lot of damage”.

BrewDog ran a Willy Wonka-inspired promotion in 2021 where 50 gold cans were hidden in its normal cases of beer. Each winner was allowed to keep the can and received £15,000 worth of BrewDog shares.

However, Watt admitted he falsely thought the cans were made of solid gold rather than being simply gold plated and sent three tweets implying they were real.

Some of the competition winners later complained and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the promotion had been misleading.

Watt said the “simple misunderstanding” had morphed into a “frenzy” and admitted he “should have been more careful”.

He wrote on LinkedIn: “We were made to look dishonest and disingenuous and we took a real hammering online and in the press. Deservedly so. My initial tweets had been misleading and we deserved the flak. What was looking like one of the best campaigns in our history was now, decidedly, the worst.

“This was my mistake and mine alone and it was on me to fix it. I had to find a way to make things right without the business to be punished for my error.”

Watt said he contacted all 50 winners and offered to pay them the “full cash amount” as an alternative to the prize if they were unhappy.

The ASA said 25 people had complained about the advert and questioned BrewDog’s claim that the cans were valued at £15,000.

Watt claimed in his post that the £15,000 valuation “was accurate”.

He said that the move had ended up costing him £470,000, or “well over two and a half years’ salary”, and that he was now “the proud owner of 40 gold cans”.

BrewDog has a history of falling foul of the ASA, which last year ruled a marketing email implying its fruit beers counted as “one of your five a day” could mislead customers. Watt responded by agreeing that "beer is not a fruit".