When Modist Brewing Company planned to release their “Dilly Dilly Mosaic Double IPA,” the company was expecting to receive a cease and desist from Bud Light, but they weren’t expecting it to be delivered by a town crier.
Video posted to the company’s Facebook page on Friday shows a man dressed in town crier gear enter the brewery and begin reading a cease and desist, complete with some olde English thrown in for authenticity.
The crier first congratulates the company on the release of their double IPA, stating “we believe that any beer that is shared between friends is a fine beer indeed,” — also known as Bud Light’s slogan — “and are duly flattered by your loyal tribute.”
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He then continues on, however, saying that “Dilly Dilly” was the “motto of our realm” and requested the company keep the IPA as a limited edition, one-time only brew.
Bud Light’s slogan was recently used in a series of advertisements centered around a kingdom in which a king is presented with Bud Light by his subjects, commending them by saying “dilly dilly.” One man then approaches him with a spiced honey-mead wine and is told he will get a tour of the “Pit of Misery.”
It is this commercial the brewing company decided to “poke fun at big beer” with their IPA, said co-founder and chief manager Eric Paredes.
He said in an interview with Global News that he considered the man presenting the wine to the king and the resulting punishment was “big beer” company’s own way of poking fun at craft beer.
“We thought we’d have a little bit of poking fun at people using the ‘Dilly Dilly’ term,” he said.
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They researched the term in order to find out if it was copyrighted but, finding out it had only been trademarked, they decided to give the term to their beer.
“We knew that they (Bud Light) were going to do something, we just decided to take the risk,” he said. “For us at worse, it’ll be a cease and desist and from there we’ll see what happens.”
The cease and desist letter came only two hours after the IPA was released on Friday, Paredes said. Though he was not at the brewery when it occurred, he said a representative for Bud Light’s maker, Anheuser-Busch, came in and informed them they “had a message from Bud Light.” Instead of a team of lawyers, however, the town crier entered.
“We appreciated it clearly. They could’ve slapped us on the wrist hard. The tone was great,” Paredes said.
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According to the town crier, “disobedience” would lead to more scrolls, then a formal warning and then “finally, a private tour of the Pit of Demise,” harkening back to the commercial.
Bud Light did provide the company with a benefit to not “disobeying” by offering two tickets to the upcoming Super Bowl in Minneapolis for “two of your finest employees.”
It’s expected the IPA will run out by next week, Paredes said.
Paredes added that despite posting the letter on Facebook and asking people to come drink “before we rename it ‘Coat Tails’, the post is an added joke about the attention the response from Bud Light has gotten.
“It was sort of a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, we’re sort of riding the coattails.”
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