Deschutes Brewery has rolled out a new "mobile marketing tool" but I’m honestly not sure what the official name is; our local newspaper article is variously calling it the "Big Barrel," "mobile beer barrel" and the headline-labeled "mobile marketing tool" that I lifted. On the Deschutes site itself they point to and call it the "Neighborhood Hops Traveling Beer Festival" which is a mouthful but I kind of like it—only "Traveling Beer Festival" isn’t really as descriptive as "mobile beer barrel."

I’m quibbling; overall, I really like the idea and I think the execution is great: it’s basically a mobile pub shaped like a giant beer barrel (complete with giant tap) that’s pulled on a trailer behind a truck. The barrel has 16 taps serving 8 Deschutes beers, and they plan to drive it around the Pacific Northwest, serving beer, and using it as a giant word-of-mouth unique marketing tool.

First destination is the Fremont Oktoberfest in Seattle this weekend, and then:

The huge beer barrel will tour Seattle for six weeks in a marketing effort to promote the Bend beers through word-of-mouth advertising, said Paul Evers, the president of tbd advertising, Deschutes Brewery’s advertising and marketing company. Evers could not disclose the cost to build the barrel, which was designed by a Los Angeles fabricator and finished in Bend, but said it was significantly less than a traditional advertising campaign in the Seattle area — one of the brewery’s largest markets.

I may have missed seeing this by a day; here’s a local blog post (from yesterday) where pictures were taken (I lifted the picture above from the post; thanks, drpack!) and people got to try it out. But since it needs to be in Seattle by Friday, I expect it’ll be driving up there tomorrow. I can’t wait to see it in person at some point, though. Looks like fun!