And when you see yourself in the sun with a cardboard cut out of your face, is that kind of swings and roundabouts? Is that good from a marketing perspective? Is that a good outcome? Because you were trying to get headlines. You complained about your own beer. You were trying to get headlines. So is that job done? I think in that one, to certain extent it was it was job done and to kind of show you how odd

things were about back then so this was kind of 2009 2010 when we were starting to get momentum and the beer scene was starting to change so the big companies had it their own way for way too long and things were starting to change there was a award ceremony in scotland in 2010 um put together by the bii the british and keepers institute and we got a heads up before the award ceremony hey guys you're going to win the award for scottish bar operator of the year so you guys better come to the come to the award ceremony so we went there we booked a table they were just about to announce i was like halfway up to the stage to get the award and they announced a different company i was like okay but then the other company didn't want to take the award because our name was engraved in the trophy he's like well we don't want it so the next day i spoke to the person that organized the award ceremony i was like what what happened like you told us we were going to win and he was like well diageo one of the world's biggest drinks companies they were the main sponsor they told me five minutes before we're due to give it to you. If they gave it to you guys, they was going to pull all future sponsorship. You're joking. So we felt we didn't have an option. So we put this online. It blew up. It was trending on Twitter globally that day. Diageo issued us a formal apology about the whole thing. And that apology was kind of broadcast news, but it just showed back then how the dynamic in the beer industry was changing and how the big beer companies and big drinks companies were acting towards that change of which the portman group was one manifestation of it did

you take that personally i

took that as a sign that we're doing the right thing so i think unless other businesses are copying you are trying to knock you then you're not doing well enough so unless you're doing something that's worthy of people copying it and like a lot of people moan oh i'm being copied it's like unless you're being copied you need to up your game and you need to do better unless your competitors are trying to knock you down you're not enough enough of a threat to your competition so i took that as a sign that we're on the right track we're doing the right thing let's keep going the

the extreme marketing thing that I saw, which was when I first read it, I thought this is fucking hilarious, is the Elvis estate tried to copyright infringe you for calling your US beer, which I think is your most popular US beer.