Last year, Starwood orchestrated a search for a Chief Beer Officer, providing a wonderful example of PR-generating Marketing as Service. Here’s a drop about this story as report by NPR:

Scott Kerkmans recently bested nearly 8,000 applicants hoping to be chief beer officer for a national hotel chain.

You read that right. It’s an actual job. The Four Points by Sheraton hotels chain created the position because it wants to market so-called craft beers as one of its specialties

Recently, Starwood renewed Scott’s contract which calls for him to blog weekly about beer, help various Four Points hotels with their craft beer selections and to educate Four Points’ guests about beer. Scott is an affable guy and especially good at matching beer with food. One of the ideas he brought to the table was a “flight of beers” which allows guests to try four craft beers at a time. Now that’s what I call pouring it on.

Kudos to Starwood for finding Scott and adding this service to their marketing mix.  I suspect beer fans, and there are a lot of us out there, will drink this one up.

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