Retail Randoms

BEFORE YOU GO

Hello? Is that the Lager line?

It’s human nature. Who can resist a challenge like the one Scottish craft brewer Innis & Gunn issued on billboards across the UK recently?

Launched as part of brand’s ‘If You Know, You Know’ summer campaign, the billboards invited consumers to contact a special WhatsApp ‘Lager Line’. While it hasn’t been made clear exactly what happened when they did, it appears that many curious consumers were rewarded with cans of beers and pint glasses. Which is more than you usually get for joining a WhatsApp group.

Live for just 24 hours, the Lager Line apparently also offered “an exchange with the award-winning brewer”, whatever that means.

HelloFresh for cats?

We don’t think we’re unveiling any closely guarded national secrets when we reveal that, as a general rule, Scottish people like a drink. A year of Covid and an early exit from The Euros has hardly helped, but even so, we were alarmed to learn that there are more than 230 ambulance callouts a day that are identified as alcohol-related in one way or another. Yup, 230 a day.

This astonishing fact was brought to our attention by the good academics of Glasgow Uni who have been analysing notes taken by paramedics at the scene. While we are a little hazy on how many ways there can be of analysing notes – other than just reading them – the research claims that the new analysis method has revealed that the number of alcohol-related callouts is more than three times what had previously been reported.

Interestingly, alcohol was a factor in a whopping 25% of all callouts for patients under 40.