A while ago, I wondered why more local breweries didn’t advertise by the sides of railway lines, like they do in Germany. One reason we came up with was that local councils wouldn’t want to be seen to promote booze or boozing.
Well, Breckland council have no such worries — earlier this year, they joined forces with the Iceni Brewery to come up with a special beer to welcome home local troops who’d been fighting in Afghanistan.
It’s not clear whether the council actually subsidised the brewing of this special batch of beer, but they’re certainly not shying away from being associated with and promoting a popular, successful local brewery.
I don’t know about you, but nothing about this makes me think (Daily Mail voice): “NOW LOCAL COUNCIL BACKS BINGEING”.
More councils should be backing, subsidising and promoting local their local breweries. They should be proud of them like Breckland Council is of Iceni.
Bailey
8 replies on “Council sponsored beer”
Here in the States, we face the same issues with advertising; mainly the ideas that kids will get their hands on alcohol (which many already do illegally) and that ads would promote alcoholism/binge drinking.
Instead of promoting a more sophisticated drinking culture, not to mention local breweries which would help bolster regional economies, we skirt the issue and demand that 21 be the age when it’s okay to discover alcohol. Without educating the public on the matter, and leaving children in the dark about the dangers and responsibility, I think more harm than good is done.
I feel that a lot of this goes back to the advertising strategy of larger, industrial brewers in the US than anything else. Rather than focusing on tradition, it’s been more about partying. Only recently have the television adverts moved back toward highlighting tradition, quality ingredients, etc.
It does not absolve people from personal responsibility, mind you, but I believe it to be a large part culture.
Couldn’t agree more. I mentioned on my blog a couple of weeks ago that the government of Northern Ireland is trying to promote the orchards of Armagh as a cider farming region, and this despite the area and its farmers being basically tee-total. More of this kind of thing.
Also, I want to hear your Daily Mail voice. Can you upload an MP3?
Eric – thanks for dropping by. I noticed your piece the other day on the new Michelob adverts which was very interesting. It seems very difficult for breweries here to get away from the laddish / partying style of adverts, although Becks have done a campaign recently emphasising the fact that they only use water, hops, yeast and malt. Mind you, the breweries here that produce real ale don’t tend to advertise much in the real world. (This is probably a good job, given the standards of the adverts I see in the specialist beer press. More on that in another post one day)
Beer Nut – don’t encourage him. I sometimes fear the wind will change when he’s doing his Daily Mail voice and he’ll be stuck like that for ever.
Boak, thanks for having me. Becks has some rather strange television adverts here that have nothing to do with ingredients or beer, but choosing between two options in a random scenario. Kind of odd, and I don’t have a YouTube link or anything, but it seems like they’re going for the chic, pseudo-sophisticated approach with the lure of “imported beer.” We eat that stuff up over here.
Just wanted to ask a quick question for either of you. Which breweries there tend to promote the party lifestyle? I’d be interested to see if certain brands are involved, like the supposed recent rebranding of Stella Artois to simply “Artois” due to said image.
Here the organisation I’m a member of, Society Of Beer Advocates, are about to start pushing to get local councles to serve local beer at functions instead of macro swill.
I dispute the authority of the London Borough of Islington over my home, the People’s Republic of Finsbury.
Beer adverts. There don’t seem to be that many TV campaigns for beer at the moment. The big drinks companies are being careful with the issue, given government and meedja concerns about bingeing. But I’ll come back to this topic when I’ve had a bit less to drink.
I don’t recall poor old Artois ever promoting the partying image – they were always “reassuringly expensive” and sponsoring films on TV.
Oddly, we seem to be getting a UK Carling TV ad over here at the moment (spaceman wearing trainers), even though Carling is something of a rarity in cans and doesn’t exist at all on draught, AFAIK.
The absolute nadir of beer TV ads was the recent Harp “It’s our thing” campaign, which attempted to appeal to the lager swilling skinhead using a variety of hilarious stereotypes of those crazy foreigners with their mad accents. The new ad is actually OK, a sort of meta-commentary on the beach party school of beer advertising.
Diageo are also running their usual Christmas Guinness ad again, which I have to confess always makes me a bit misty-eyed. (My excuse is that it’s one of the few Guinness ads that doesn’t actually show the product at any point.)