When watching a 2013 YouTube video titled “GENERIC BEER IS MADE BY PIMPS & THIEVES” posted by James Watt, the founder of the craft ale company BrewDog, it’s hard to imagine a time when he or his company were ever seen as cool. But in the 2010s, Watt and BrewDog had a grip on British popular culture. His publicity stunts – whether sending beer to the Kremlin or dropping taxidermied cats across the city of London – carried a stick-it-to-the-man ethos, perfectly appealing to millennial hipster aesthetics. And Watt (self-branded as the “ethical punk”) became the poster-boy of cutting-edge corporatism. His company’s marketing style was laddish, and eschewed the vernacular of glass-officed ivory towers. It was a vibe increasingly sought out by brands at the time.
Watt achieved this rarefied status not just through these “cheeky” stunts and advertising that supposedly conveyed a transgressive edge (sometimes achieved through simple use of expletives). He also turned BrewDog into a household name through loud declarations of his company’s employment values: in a 2016 TEDx Talk he insisted the best companies were ones that prioritised internal culture and valued their workers above all else. “The more you can invest in your team and your people, the stronger your company culture is going to become,” he said, crediting BrewDog’s investment in its staff as the key to its success. The company became synonymous with a community-focused philosophy, promoting worker welfare, and focusing on sustainability gaining B-corp status in 2020. BrewDog committed to becoming a Real Living Wage employer.
While there were always sceptics, there were many more who sincerely bought in to the brand. BrewDog beers became a low-effort anti-corporate signal (even for those high-paid city workers frequenting BrewDog bars on Thursday nights.) But both BrewDog and Watt have found themselves in a rocky PR landscape for years now. In 2021, more than 300 former and current BrewDog staff signed the now notorious “Punks with Purpose” open letter detailing the culture at the company, singling out a “cult of personality” around Watt as the source of the “rotten” internal dysfunction, also criticising Watt’s co-founder Martin Dickie. Just six months later, the BBC released a damning documentary The Truth about BrewDog, which made allegations about Watt’s workplace conduct. The same year, BrewDog lost its B-corp status and, last January, after its third year in a row of losses, BrewDog said it would be dropping its Real Living Wage commitments. Watt ultimately stepped down as CEO in May, remaining within the company under the vague title of BrewDog “Captain”.
Watt has remained a popular figure in the tabloid news, appearing at Nigel Farage’s 60th birthday party and announcing his engagement to the Made in Chelsea alum Georgia Toffolo in the style of a LinkedIn post. But his headline-grabbing antics peaked last week when Watt posted a now-deleted Instagram video with Toffolo saying, “I think the whole concept of work-life balance was invented by people who hate the work that they do.” “If you love what you do,” he said, “you don’t need work-life balance, you need work-life integration.” He and Toffolo went on to valorise their lifestyles of constant work, adding that they get Watt’s two school-aged daughters to help them come up with business ideas over the dinner table.
You may well have seen this video – it quickly went viral. But for those who haven’t followed Watt’s career closely, it may seem a bizarre admission.
In his 2015 corporate manual Business for Punks: Start Your Business Revolution – the BrewDog Way, Watt lays out a corporate philosophy that surprisingly resembles that sentiment of work-life integration. He provides guidance such as “learning from mistakes is for losers” and “advice is for freaks and clowns”. Watt adds, “You also need to be completely oblivious to the real world.” He suggests that rules should be broken and that there are “laws to be stretched”. To succeed in business, he implores readers: “Be a selfish bastard.”
“All you need to do for people to hate you is to be successful doing something that you love,” Watt says. “This is good though. It is a sign you are on the right track.”
This philosophy is obvious in the BBC’s exposé. It revealed that, in 2017, Watt owned £500,000 worth of shares in Heineken, while loudly denigrating established multinational breweries in public. (The programme-makers made it clear that there was nothing illegal about this – though it was at odds with his company’s anti-corporate ethos – and that Watt had since sold the shares.) He also sold 22 per cent of BrewDog to an American private equity firm, which many of the shareholders who invested in BrewDog via “Equity for Punks” described as a “kick in the teeth”. (Similarly, the BBC found holes in many of the brand’s eco-friendly claims, something which staff also called out in the “Punks with Purpose” letter.) The investigation also focused on a number allegations of harassment and inappropriate behaviour from Watt, in which former BrewDog bartenders said his behaviour on visits to the brand’s venues made them feel “uncomfortable” and “powerless”. Others spoke about having to carefully work around his bar visits, scheduling certain female workers’ shifts so that they could avoid him. Watt has “categorically denied” these allegations.
In the light of all this, should anyone follow Watt’s guidance on how they should view their relationship to work? It is of course also far easier for Watt to see work-life integration as a net positive, even without the allegations about working practices within BrewDog: he is not a low- or even middle-wage worker. His labour – comfortable enough to be conducted from one of his many homes, apparently over dinner with his kids – serves his brand first. His hard work, unlike the vast majority of the workforce, entirely benefits himself.
Watt’s sentiment is audacious, but it isn’t unique: it is part of a wider shift in how wealthy bosses now talk about workplace well-being, moving away from the 2010s era of corporate benevolence (a movement in part led by Watt himself) and instead doubling down on unhealthy work obsession. Since the pandemic, we have seen this manifest in the end of workplace perks, the re-emergence of five-day-a-week in-office mandates, as well as a backlash against work-life balance initiatives, such as the four-day week. (In the time since I began writing this paragraph, the ex Asda chairman and M&S chief executive Stuart Rose has dismissed working from home as “not doing proper work”). It is part of the reactionary lurch to the right within the establishment, be it the White House or Silicon Valley. Well-being-focused attitudes in 2025 feel culturally out of place; a bro-ish “grindset”, on the other hand, fits perfectly within the approach creeping back into the corporate world.
This top-down messaging, however, can only go so far. We can take solace in the fact that the well-being initiatives that boomed 15 years ago didn’t lead to lasting or meaningful change for most, even in the short term. When it comes to re-establishing the grindset, it is likely to be the same. We are also witnessing a real shift in attitudes to work from younger generations, who are resisting “hustle culture” in favour of sticking to long-term, often unglamorous but stable jobs. Millionaires, investors and CEOs can only dictate so much to a growing workforce happy to refuse flashy titles and salaries that don’t come with real benefits.
Watt’s philosophy has served him well. There will be many who see his success and take his words at face value, who even spin them as something that looks like passion or care (and the backlash as merely the characteristic jealousy of “haters”). And his recent gaffe is just part of a broader shift in the culture. But, the entire philosophy is, ironically, best viewed through the lens of Watt’s own advice: “A company’s culture is what that company does when it thinks that no one is looking… It is actions, not words.”
[See also: The paradox of Molly-Mae Hague]
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