Perhaps remaining somewhat under-the-radar outside of the tech/advertising community, two individuals have partnered up in attempts at crowdsourcing the purchase of Pabst Brewing Company. As you may have heard, Pabst has been put up for sale for $300 million dollars. 

Over the past few months, this concept has been getting a decent level of publicity (and pledges of cash). Chatter has been mixed ranging from enthusiastic Pabst drinkers wanting to support this cause to business savvy folks wondering how in the world this will ever succeed. 

Brian Flatow, President of the Ad Store agency was nice enough to answer some of my questions about this project. And in case any of you are wondering, I did throw down $5 just in case.

1) How and why did you come up with this idea? Why $300 Million?

The New York Post reported the story that the Pabst Brewing Company was looking for a buyer and wanted $300MM.  Michael Migliozzi from Forza Migliozzi is an old friend of mine and Tweeted the story.  I responded that I was in if he was – and the idea was born from that. We had been discussing crowdsourcing of advertising and design and I was arguing that it produces crappy work without any real insight. But, when Michael suggested we crowdsource the money to buy PBR we agreed it was a great opportunity to try and harness the power of the crowd.

2) The bottom of the website states that this program is not affiliated with Pabst, what do they think of this? 

We haven't heard from The Pabst Brewing Company.

3) A lot of people have been asking, "What happens if you succeed?" As the website approaches $220 Million in pledges this may very well happen. The website and program seems simple as a theoretical entity, but a real exchange of dollars and ownership of a company is incredibly complex. What would it take for this to work?

Actually, we have $80MM in pledges. The counter is counting down.

There are two ways for this to work. We pull together a management team from scratch or we partner with a venture capital firm who is already pursuing ownership of the Pabst Brewing Company that is willing to "share ownership" with the people who have pledged.  Either way, like you said, a real exchange of dollars would be complicated. But, because I'm simple minded, I simplify it as the people who have pledged will receive some form of stock certificate representing their ownership of the Pabst Brewing Company upon receipt of payment of their pledge online. The important thing, from our perspective, is that the people who make good on their pledge do get real ownership. 

4) If this DOES work, it will be one of the largest crowdsourced projects ever (depending on your definition of that word). What lessons have you learned since the start of this idea?

It's about the brand. People didn't get behind this idea because a couple jerks in advertising tweeted about it all day. It grew because people had an affinity for the PBR brand.  This is a simple, no-risk way to express that affinity.  It doesn't take a big prize or a fancy website to engage people, it takes an idea that like-minded people can get behind and be a part of. I realize this isn't rocket science, but a lot of us forget this when we're working for our clients. 

5) Any stats you can share with us? Traffic? Average Pledge? Etc? 

The average pledge is around $27 with roughly 3 million pledges.

If you're interested in pledging, check out BuyABeerCompany.com