Slain from the Station House Brewery in Frodsham, Cheshire, is actually pretty nicely branded for a St George’s Day cash-in.
It was so restrained compared to the other beers on the bar (British Bulldog and Old Enoch Powell) that it took me a while to ‘get it’.
As for the beer, I think it’s the only example of what those who are into beer styles would call a ‘northern brown ale’ I’ve ever had on draught. It wasn’t fantastic, but it certainly made a change.
All of the bits and pieces of brewery and pub marketing below were spotted in East or South London. I wonder if people in 50 years time will find remnants of Wetherspoons branding so evocative? Probably.
We had a nice afternoon in one of our favourite London pubs soured on Saturday when we were more-or-less asked to leave to free up the table for a reservation. When we queried whether it had to be our table, given that there were lots of others without reservation signs on, we got a very stroppy response from the bar manager.
The practice of moving people or hurrying them along to squeeze in a second sitting is annoying even in real restaurants, however sensible it might be from a business perspective. But the questions of whether you should be able to reserve tables in pubs at all is a sensitive debate for many British people — it’s a level of formality that seems somehow to undermine the very idea of what the pub is about.
People in Germany seem to cope with it, but maybe that’s because there the reserved signs appear (often with profuse apologies) four hours in advance of the booking, so you’ve got plenty of time to finish up, or just choose another table. In the Greenwich Union, we were given an hour — hardly enough time to eat desert and have another drink.
In the couple of hours we were there, we enjoyed cask conditioned Meantime IPA (7.5%, and not as good as from a bottle) and gained a new appreciation for the fruity, sherbety draught Meantime Helles (4.1%).
So, the Union continues to be both brilliant and annoying. God knows we love the beer, but it might be a while before we go back.
Tandleman and Pete Brown have both written about the fact that the Advertising Standards Authority have upheld complaints against this advert for Courage bitter:
But I can’t help but be reminded of the kerfuffle around this advert, from the same parent company, three years ago:
Given how clear the rules are about linking alcohol with increased attractiveness or confidence, these can’t be mistakes. I’ve seen the Courage ad more in the news today than I have in paid for advertising slots anywhere in the last few weeks. Contrived controversy = free publicity.
Phase one of the new Carling campaign was bad enough. But in phase two, the ad men have reached a new low. Get a load of this from the voiceover:
“Carling know it’s important to check their barley themselves.”
A few questions spring to mind:
So, here’s our proposed slogan for phase three:
“Carling know that beer is supposed to taste nice.”
UK pub company Mitchells and Butlers are apparently planning to open a series of unique “concept bars”. They’ll be part of a chain but designed to look like they’re independent.
The UK pub chain company owns, among others, O’Neill’s, Scream Pubs and All Bar One, but has clearly recognised (as we’ve pointed out before) that big companies and boringly ubiquitous brands are going out of fashion. They’re not going away, though — just into hiding.
Interesting to see how this business model works out. Our bet is that one of the bars will do better than the others and then turn into a chain…
The Speaker in Westminster will be offering a range of Remembrance Sunday related ales this weekend for anyone who wants a quiet pint after attending ceremonies at the Cenotaph. Slightly weird? Maybe, but what an eye for the angle!
Nicely branded Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale
We’ve always felt slightly guilty about how easily we are influenced by the packaging and presentation of our beer. This week, however, a friend tipped us off to a piece of research from 2004 which suggests we’re not being entirely irrational.
The experiment showed that people actually had a stronger pleasurable reaction to a soft drink when they were cued up to expect one brand or another, and presented with packaging.
Test subjects were given Coke and Pepsi without being told which brand was which. These drinks are chemically almost identical, as Samuel McClure points out. With no branding to refer to, the subjects showed about the same degree of “neural response” in the “ventromedial prefrontal cortex” in both cases. Then, when they were told which brand was which (when they were “brand cued”) they not only stated a preference for one over the other, but actually, measurably enjoyed it more.
So, maybe when we get all excited by the nice label on a bottle of beer, and the pretty glass it’s served in, and the quality of the head on the beer — stuff that shouldn’t really matter, but does to us — we have a similar chemical-electrical reaction?
We’re not scientists. If anyone would like to correct or elaborate on our primitive understanding of what this research means, go for it!
The most recent issue of Marketing casually mentions, in an article on Stella Artois’ branding, that the lager contains “only the four traditional ingredients of beer” — malt, water, hops and maize.
So, it seems that the sneaky campaign from earlier this year has partially achieved its aim. That is, subtly linking the idea that beer has a limited number of traditional ingredients (as per the German purity law) with the four slightly different ingredients found in Stella.
Maize is not, of course, traditionally found in beer, and has only been included by sly brewers in the last century or so to reduce the cost of production and lighten the flavour.
According to advertising trade mag Marketing Week, sales of the top beer brands are down 5 per cent up to April 2008.
The biggest drops are in sales of Kronenbourg 1664, Stella Artois, Carlsberg Export and Grolsch. Sales of John Smith’s Extra Smooth and Carlsberg (ordinary) are up.
Their say that the current ‘drink-aware climate’ and England’s absence from the European Championship are the main reasons.
The first certainly sounds plausible to us. People we know seem to be much happier ordering a shandy or a ‘weak beer’ than they were a couple of years ago.
And, of course, there’s been a huge defection to cider from beer, as witnessed by booming sales of Strongbow.
We're a pair of beer geeks who live in London in the UK. Bailey is a man, Boak is a lady. We've been writing this beer blog since April 2007 and it's taken us all over Britain and Europe in pursuit of the perfect pint.
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