Drinks magazine to blame for mass catatonic shutdown

pic: Aaron Jacobs, flickr

The two hour shutdown of the global booze industry yesterday has been blamed on an ‘impossibly dull’ story in a drinks trade magazine, Fake Booze has learned.

Exclusive packaging scoop

The story – ‘Champagne Boff in packaging rethink’ – was published at 10am on the Drinks Trade News International website and is reckoned to have rendered 50% of the European drinks industry comatose inside two hours.

‘Exclusively revealing’ a font change on the Champagne’s front and back labels, the story has been described as ‘dangerously dull, even by the standards of drinks publishing’.

‘The original article was bad enough,’ said Mona Lott of the journalistic watchdog Stop Publishing Unreadable Drivel (SPUD). ‘But they followed this up with an ‘exclusive interview’ with the brand’s MD, who, coincidentally, happens to book a lot of advertising with them.’

The two pieces rated 9 on the Catatonia Scale, which is ‘higher than most humans can comfortably tolerate – though still somewhat below an average issue of Decanter.’

Cash for content

‘This isn’t the first time that Drinks Trade News International has sailed close to the wind with its tedium levels,’ said Ms Lott.

The Labelgate scandal followed ‘explosive revelations’ last month that Champagne Boff was ‘hoping to increase its sales in the Philippines with a new distributor’ and a ‘shock no comment’ stance about the 2021 vintage.

‘Running stories like this is how we maintain our relevance,’ said the magazine’s publisher, Kashfur Content.

‘Or at least our profitability.’

Critics have called the non-stop publishing of non-stories by advertisers as ‘pay to play – pure and simple’.

But Mr Content said this was inaccurate and the magazine ‘preferred to think of them as dosh for dross.’

A win-win

Contacted by Fake Booze, Champagne Boff said it was looking forward to a ‘bumper year – at least in terms of coverage if not in sales’.

‘Editorial standards have never been lower, which means that our coverage will never be higher,’ said Pierre Boff. ‘It’s a win win for everyone…

‘Except people who want to know what’s actually going on.’

No middle-man

The publishers of Drinks Trade News International said they were hoping eventually to remove staff altogether and have clients simply post their own news stories directly onto the website.

‘But that’s not going to happen any time soon,’ said Mr Content. ‘Certainly not before Christmas.’

Fall in Productivity

The Global Organisation of Beverage Alcohol (GOOBA) said they would carefully monitor tedium levels in the industry to ensure this kind of thing didn’t happen again.

‘Obviously, it’s not desirable to have two-hour shut-downs like this,’ a spokesman told Fake Booze. ‘Though on the plus side it seems that productivity was barely affected.

‘In fact, it may even have increased.’

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