Category Archives: marketing

An Unworked Stream with Just Enough Gold

Panning for Gold

Believe it or not, we’re not completely stuck in the seventies, Life on Mars style: we’ve also spent a bit of time recently talking to the current generation of British brewers, and have a few more interviews scheduled. In particular, we’ve most recently been considering those parts of the industry which, if it hadn’t become a hated buzzword, we might have called ‘innovative’.

The critics are right, though — innovative isn’t the correct word, because there’s rarely anything new being done, even if it’s being presented differently. Let’s express it another way: we mean brewers who are producing beer for which there is apparently almost no market.

They’re making beer which hardly anyone has asked for; which most people won’t like; which will make some people downright angry; and cause many of their peers to look at them with raised eyebrows.

And yet… these brewers are paying the bills, it seems, and finding money to invest in their businesses too boot. They’re optimistic for the future and worrying less about finding new accounts than fulfilling outstanding orders while they await delivery of shiny new fermenting vessels. There was even tentative talk from one exhausted-looking brewer of taking a holiday abroad this year, for the first time in several years.

Maybe they can be likened to bands with ‘one thousand true fans‘? In his 2008 article of that name, Kevin Kelly suggested that was how many devotees a ‘creator’ needed to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

All breweries making freaky beer need to do is find the handful of freaks who will love it.

What’s Up With Zero Degrees?

Beer pumps at Zero Degrees, Bristol, 2009.

Zero Degrees Bristol, 2009.

Zero Degrees is still, as far as we know, the only chain of brewpubs in the UK. They make beer which is usually decent and often excellent, on shiny kit, in nice-looking, spacious bars. But, for some reason, they’re just not cool.

In the last six months or so, we’ve been to both the Bristol and Reading branches between us. Because no-one talks about them, we assumed they must have gone off the boil but, no, the beer was excellent on both occasions, notably a very clean, polished Rauchbier in Bristol, and a floral Pilsner in Reading which we’re calling ‘crunchy’, because it was more than crisp.

And yet both bars were mostly empty.

Having been brewing since before the ‘craft beer’ craze kicked off in earnest c.2007/08, and with those lovely city centre premises, they ought to be riding the crest of a wave. Instead, they’ve got a downtrodden, sad-sack feel, as if they’ve run out of puff not far from the finish line.

Perhaps their brand got derailed early on — more ‘style bar’ for people on the pull than beer geek destination — or maybe they’re simply lacking PR nous. Who exactly is behind it? We don’t know, and it’s not easy to find out. Not a problem for Brewdog, you’ll note, who are doing rather well with a personality-led brand.

Our feeling is that they need to re-brand (it’s all a bit corporate and very 2005) and expand, or they’ll wither away.

A Tactical Error?

One of the strengths of the Campaign for Real Ale has been its political… neutrality isn’t quite the right word… let’s say, vagueness.

It has been denounced as dangerously left-wing — anarchistic, in fact — by big brewers, and yet conservatives (small C), Conservatives (big C) and even fascists have been active members, alongside socialists like Roger Protz. As long as the focus is on beer and pubs, then everyone seems to rub along more-or-less happily, and membership hasn’t been a political statement.

Yesterday, however, the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a group which argues for small government and lower taxes, started a campaign against the Beer Duty Escalator, and promptly began spamming every brewery, beer writer and boozer in the land. CAMRA responded like this:

The problem is that the TPA, unlike CAMRA, do have an obvious position on the political spectrum — they are funded by secret donors, but widely thought to be allied, in a rather shadowy manner, to the right wing of the Conservative Party — and some left-leaning CAMRA members reacted with displeasure at this new development.

CAMRA’s response was a tactical error because it risks alienating a big chunk of CAMRA’s membership from what has become a key campaign issue; it allows a campaign about something very specific to be co-opted as part of a wider campaign against the principle of low taxation. It will cause many to question their opposition to the Beer Duty Escalator as they connect that specific tax with a reduction in public services (e.g. libraries) to which they might also be opposed.

The TPA have a good track-record in winning battles they enter, partly because of well-funded and cleverly-conceived PR stunts, so perhaps its worth losing or annoying a few members to gain the assistance of such a powerful ally.

Our feeling, however, is that CAMRA has more to gain in the long run from remaining aloof from politics with a capital P; and that a simple ‘thanks for your support’ would have been more appropriate in this case.

Practicing what we preach, we’re keeping our politics vague: this is a comment on CAMRA’s PR tactics, not on the TPA, or even the Escalator.

Session #70: Don’t Believe the Hype

This month’s Session is hosted by Mr David J. He’s asked:

  • Which beers do you think have been overhyped?
  • How do you feel when a beer doesn’t live up to it’s hype?
  • Is hype a good or bad thing for beer?

There are two kinds of hype, as we see it. First, there’s the organic variety whereby a ‘buzz’ spreads by word of mouth, online, and (less so these days) in books and magazines: “You have to try this beer!” Then there’s hype ‘got up’ by breweries and their PR people restricting supply, designing fancy packaging and ‘generating debate’ (being annoying).

The first type seems to follow a wave pattern:

  1. This beer is pretty good.
  2. He said the beer was pretty good and boy was he right!
  3. Everyone is talking about how great this beer is! It’s this year’s must-drink!
  4. Meh. Given the hype, this beer wasn’t as great as I was expecting.
  5. This beer is famously overrated.
  6. This beer is shite.
  7. Actually, I really liked it… I thought it was pretty good.

And so on.

As we may have mentioned once or twice, being swayed by extraneous factors (the company you’re in, branding, context) doesn’t make you a mug or a sap, just human. But it is worth calibrating your tastebuds against your prejudices with a blind-tasting every once in a while, as it might turn out the beer you think you like best is the one you enjoy least.

We’ve not felt post-hype disappointment very often, as it happens. We’re too lazy and tight-fisted to chase limited edition, mail-order-only, numbered-sequence beers; and we know whose opinions we trust when it comes to recommendations.

Wait… or maybe we’re just huge suckers who will always enjoy a beer if its been hyped enough?

Ale, Lager and Macho Fantasy

Carlsberg Special Brew Advert 1976.In 1983, a piece of fluff research sponsored by the International Lager Festival, and written up in The Daily Mirror by none other than Alastair Campbell, found that lager drinkers were ‘better in bed… suaver, slimmer, more sophisticated and better educated than bitter drinkers’. They tended to fancy ‘women like Raquel Welch, TV presenter Sue Lawley and actress Pamela Stephenson’. They were men as cool as Sting or Barry Sheene. Bitter drinkers, on the other hand, as represented by Bernard Manning and Jocky Wilson, were ‘big and fat, dull and drab with hairy chests and spend so much time playing darts with the lads that when they go to bed, it’s usually to sleep’.

A CAMRA spokesman disagreed with these findings: ‘better in bed my boot’.

Oddly, when a survey was conducted by real ale brewers Hall and Woodhouse (aka ‘Badger’) in 1989, the results were quite different. As reported in The Times on 30 December that year:

Ale fellows, it seems, like to think of themselves as country types who work the land, wear rough-textured clothes and are “physically stronger than men of today”. “It is here that the real attraction of this fantasy lies,” says Thornton Mustard, the marketing psychologist behind the project.

Mr Mustard, who, amazingly, is a real person, went on to say that, in the ale drinker’s fantasy:

…the work pace is seen to be leisurely, and it is nearly always summer. The only variation is the harvest; a lovely autumnal mood. A man works hard and is brought tankards of ale by his wife. He has earned this ale: it is strong, yet refreshing.

‘Bitter’, on the other hand, ‘has a rough, uncultured and very masculine tonality which reassures today’s man that underneath his civility he is little-changed’. It’s was a word of the industrial north, he reckoned. (Oh, really?).

His conclusion? Brewers should market to men using one macho fantasy or another and leave women alone to make up their own minds: ‘The whole idea of marketing to women has been a disaster because it always comes across as incredibly condescending.’

Alternate History: XXXX instead of IPA

Imaginary keg font with 1977 Food Standards labelling recommendations.

The UK Government’s 1977 Food Standards Committee Report on Beer is a strange but illuminating document. It records how certain words and phrases relating to beer were being used at a certain point in time and, in its recommendations, most of which were ignored, presents a vision of what might have been.

After representations from CAMRA and others, the Committee agreed that beer needed clearer labelling. Their proposals were that draught beer point-of-sale information (pumpclips) ought to contain:

  • A declaration of the amount of the amount of malted barley used.
  • An indicator of strength based on the ‘XXX’ system, referring to original gravity rather than alcohol percentage in the finished product.
  • Disclosure of carbonation above 1.5 volumes.

Their proposal for the gravity bands and acceptable (but not compulsory) text descriptions was as follows.

  • Up to but not including 1035 — Light — X
  • 1035 up to but not including 1041 — Special, Heavy — XX
  • 1041 up to but not including 1047 — Export, India Pale Ale (IPA) — XXX
  • 1047 up to but not including 1062 — Strong — XXXX
  • 1062 and above — Extra Strong, Barley Wine — XXXXX

In the explanatory notes, they say this of IPA:

“India Pale Ale” (“IPA”) was originally brewed to have sufficient stability for export by sea to India and “export” probably came into use as a modern equivalent. These beers were originally stronger than those brewed for the home market and our impression is that consumers expect them to be rather stronger than ordinary beers. We recommend that the use of these two descriptions should be restricted to beers in the third band (XXX). We realise that there will be some beers which have been called “export” which are stronger than is given by this band. Any limitation of names must create anomalies, which are the more to be regretted if the claim to the name has a reasonable basis in terms of the original meaning of export.

They also suggest banning the use of the words ‘best’ and ‘premium’ on beer packaging. If they’d reported this year, they’d probably have added to that list ‘craft’, ‘crafted’, and so on.

On that basis, a pumpclip for a keg IPA with an original gravity of more than 1047 (that is, stronger than about 4.5% ABV) might have looked something like the one we’ve mocked up in the picture above. Weird, huh?

Ersatzsteiner Pils

Detail from our own Epingwalder Pilsner label.

While bigger breweries have tended to license European or global lager brands, regional and micro brewers have often turned out their own product under what they imagine to be a Germanic-sounding name. Here are some we’ve come across in our rambles.

Davenport’s Continental Lager. Let’s start with easily the laziest attempt to imply a European heritage we’ve come across. Could they not at least have called it Continentalbrau? (c.1973.)

Elgood’s Iceberg. Clever this one — a suitably Germanic word, but also an early use of coldness as a marketing angle. (Frank Baillie said it had ‘a pleasant flavour’.) (c.1973.)

Firkinstein. This seems to have originated in 1986 at the Fleece and Firkin in Bristol, which David Bruce sold off to Allied in 1983.

Litchborough Litchbrau. It wasn’t long into the microbrewery boom of the 1970s before an ersatz lager came along, from Bill Urquhart’s Litchborough Brewery, founded in 1974. Bill’s daughter recalls it selling quite well.

Greenall Whitley Grunhalle. One of our favourite names. It was strong, apparently. Is it the same Grunhalle conceived by Randall’s of Jersey and licensed to other brewers? Or did great minds think alike? (c.1973.)

Hall and Woodhouse Brock Lager. Sounds a bit like ‘bock’, nice Germanic ring, but also another word for badger, from the Old English. Nicely done. (c.1973.)

Hilden Hildenbrau. ‘A distinctive brew which undergoes several weeks conditioning’, said Brian Glover in 1987.

Ruddle’s Langdorf Lager. Brewed at Langham. Geddit?

Samuel Smith’s Alpine Lager. AKA ‘man in a box’. Bore the Ayinger name under license for a while, but now back under it’s original, retro, 1970s name.

Taddington Moravka. We remember this being launched in, we think, 2008. Not ersatz Germanic, in this case, but faux Slavonic, and very coy about its Derbyshire origins.

Vaux Norseman. Apparently ‘passed through a cooling unit’, according to Frank Baillie, so could have been called Norseman Extra Cold, if they’d thought of it. (c.1973.)

Young’s Saxon. Young & Co. produced various lagers over their lifetime. Saxon was on sale in the early 1970s, but we remember seeing the plainly-named Young’s Pilsner on sale c.2004. Not fondly remembered.

Have we missed any corkers? And does anyone remember drinking the obsolete beers listed above?

Of course, continental brewers have also been known to apply Ersatz English names to their attempts to brew ales...

 

Bland is fine, homogeneous a problem

Three slices

In the past, we’ve been guilty of sniping at specific beers that annoy us with their blandness, but we now think that’s probably the wrong thing to fret over.

In April 1972, consumer magazine Which? surveyed the most popular keg bitters on the British market.

…none smelled very strongly in the glass — none was either unpleasant or very pleasant. As far as taste went, the overwhelming impression of our tasters was that none of the keg bitters had any very characteristic taste… we also carried out a standard laboratory test for hop — bitterness. These results confirmed how similar the keg beers were.

The problem here is the similarity between the products.

What we, as consumers, need to be wary of is a homogeneous market which offers us no real choice. Bland keg bitters might not be to your taste, but it’s no bad thing that they exist as part of a varied landscape which also includes stronger, darker, lighter, more flowery, lagered, Belgian, American and downright wacky beers.

We haven’t yet seen an original copy of Which? from April 1972 but, fortunately, Christopher Hutt quotes from this article at length in his The Death of the English Pub (1973).

Picture from Flickr Creative Commons: Three Slices by Nick Saltmarsh.

Sexism in beer: it used to be a lot worse

We wholeheartedly agree with Melissa Cole’s call for an end to sexist imagery in beer branding, but nonetheless take heart from how far we’ve come in the last forty years. Consider this, for example, from a full-page ad from Whitbread in the Daily Express in 1968.

How to choose you beer and chat-up our barmaids

We realise we’re addressing a limited audience.

Only the young, the the abstemious and the foreign tourist, at a guess.

For certainly our regulars need no help in getting familiar with our beers. Or our barmaids.

Though, on the face of it, the choice is just a little bewildering. On average, where you see the Whitbread sign, you can choose from twenty different beers.

Served by Britain’s most gorgeous barmaids. (We have annual beauty contests to keep the standard up.)

So now, with our little bit of chat about our beers, we’re also giving a few tips on how to chat-up our birds.

We’d hate to think some tourists come all the way to Britain and miss the most attractive scenery.

Whitbread for Choice

The Power of a Good Pumpclip

Magic Rock brewing pumpclip

When we went to the Craft Beer Company with a not-especially-beery mate last week, we got to see the power of branding in action.

Faced with a vast array of pumps, slightly anxious at too much choice, and aware of the queue behind him, our chum made a snap decision: he went for Magic Rock Curious. Why? Because the design stood out as professional, stylish and interesting. Because it leapt off the bartop shouting: “Buy me!”

Sadly, there was none left, and he had to settle for another beer suggested by the barmaid. As it turned out, it was every bit as nice as Curious, but we’d never have known that if left to our own devices, because its pumpclip looked like something from an A level art portfolio c.2002 – Photoshop for Dummies, posterise-everything amateur hour.

Design can’t be an afterthought, because, in the current competititve climate, it can mean the difference between a beer either selling briskly or quietly turning to vinegar in its cask. We punters — especially those of us who simply drink beer rather than obsessing over it — are fickle, superficial, shallow creatures.