It's the old battle between measurable performance marketing and vague branding/artsy advertising, I guess everyone picks a side.

Since you used a beer example however, I will point out that Claude Hopkins famously made Schlitz beer #1 by using modern, trackable, results-driven advertising that he split tested relentlessly. This was close to 100 years ago, so I guess not much has changed(or brand advertisers haven't evolved much in the last century).