Categories
marketing

Stella up to their usual tricks

A slick CGI image from the weasely new Stella ad
A slick CGI image from the weasely new Stella ad

The geniuses behind Stella Artois really are trying to convince us of the historical worth of their brew. A new advertising campaign on the telly makes lots of intriguing references to “1366”, obviously designed to suggest that this is when the beer originated.

A bit of digging around their website makes it clear that a brewery existed in Leuven in 1366… Apparently, thanks to the “courage” of some medieval monks, Stella Artois exists today. Er… If you dig around on their website, it’s quite clear that whatever happened in Leuven in 1366 has sweet Fanny Adams to do with Stella Artois.

The funny thing is that they keep making reference to the “four ingredients”. But which four? Is this the barley, hops, maize and water proudly boasted of in their billboards? If you go into their site, they have five (not four) mini-films to illustrate different “challenges” of brewing. Hops, water and barley get a mention, as does yeast (unlike in the billboards). The fifth challenge of brewing has nothing to do with making the beer, but is to do with exporting it.

Oddly, maize isn’t mentioned in these adverts. But it would be a bit tricky to square with this historical heritage angle, given it originated in Mesoamerica and therefore would have been unknown to the good burghers of Brabant in 1366.

I’m sorry, but this kind of mock historical bollocks really, really gets on my tits. Fortunately, the campaign is way too inconsistent to fool anyone.

NB – we’ve not linked to any of the Stella pages so as not to increase their presence on the interweb. You can find it for yourself if you have nothing better to do. But you really ought to have something better to do.

UPDATE 17/08/08: image added.

Categories
marketing

Weird marketing from St Austell

A vicar in front of a pub

St Austell have taken to spamming us with press releases (a bit annoying, but we do like the beer, so what the hey).

The above photo is part of their latest weird attempt to generate interest in the beer. To cut a long story short, the local vicar did a service in a pub.

Frankly, Stella Artois might taste rancid, but their marketeers know how to make a silk purse from the proverbial sow’s ear. St Austell’s, on the other hand… their beer is fantastic, but now I’m thinking: “It’s what Cornish vicars drink. Great — that’s a lifestyle I aspire to!”

The really scary thing is, when the picture was taken, the vicar was on his own. Those people in the background only showed up when it was developed. He… he sees dead people!

Categories
marketing

Scotland – natural home of tasty lager?

We picked up three great Scottish lagers last week from Utobeer. We were with friends, so we were pretending not to be sad and didn’t take any notes, which means we can’t give you much in the way of detailed descriptions. Nonetheless, they’re all recommended.

First we tried Latitude Pilsner, from the Atlas Brewery. We thought this was fruity and sherbety, and packed a good amount of flavour in for 3.9%. We wonder what the cask verson is like?

Next up was Hop Rocker from BrewDog. This is the first time we’ve had anything from BrewDog, but it certainly won’t be the last. This reminded us quite a lot of Brooklyn lager, although maybe not as intense — a good mixture of sweetness and bitter, nice balanced carbonation. The Beer Nut has recently reviewed it, here.

Finally, an old favourite – Harviestoun’s Schiehallion. We’ve always liked this one for its full flavour and wonderfully dry, perfumy finish.

Perhaps Scotland is the natural place for producing quality UK lagers? It’s a bit cooler than England (not that we’re roasting here at the moment!) and therefore well suited to lagering, and the water’s probably a bit better for it too.

Boak

PS — we note that Brew Dog are “in trouble” again — after being picked on by the Portman group for aggressive labelling, they’re now being attacked in the press for launching Tokyo, possibly Britain’s strongest beer at 12%. You can read their side of the story on their blog, here. Are they unlucky, or just shrewd at marketing?

We drank them at a bring-your-own Ethiopian restaurant in Shepherd’s Bush. Blimey, that’s some filling food. We’re still stuffed now.

Categories
Beer history bottled beer marketing

Great stuff this Bass

We found this advert for Bass in a magazine from 1955. There’s something in the argument they give for their filtered blue triangle beer as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried to take bottle-conditioned beer to a picnic…

An advert for Bass beer from 1955 -- red triangle is bottle conditioned, but blue triangle is better for taking to cricket matches!

Here’s an old post with another vintage beer advert.

Categories
breweries Germany marketing pubs

A pub / brewery with an identity problem (Heidelberg)


Entepreneurs trying to start breweries/brewpubs in Germany seem rather torn about the way to market their beer. Many just go straight for the Olde Worlde market, using gothic typefaces to explain how their beer may be something like something that was once brewed in the area and how they’re carrying on a grand tradition. They fill their pub with dried hops and bits of breweriana, load the menu with pork, and hope you’ll go along with the pretence.

Others (for example, the excellent Bar Fuesser in Nuremberg) are more willing to admit their recent roots – they may experiment with trendier typefaces, diversify the decor, and perhaps even offer a vegetarian option in amongst the ten cuts of pork. However, there will still be plenty of reassuring nods to “tradition” – a copy of the Reinheitsgebot in germanic script seems obligatory, for example. Even the modern pubs can’t help themselves indulging in mock-historical “fuckery-foo” (thanks, Charlie Brooker).

But we’ve never come across a place so confused as “Brauhaus & Backwerk”, a pub belonging to the Welde brewery, right on the main square in Heidelberg.

We’d done a bit of research before we came about pubs and breweries in Heidelberg, but hadn’t heard of this one. Naturally, our attention was grabbed by the fact it appeared to be offering its own beer. Inside, the place was done up like a tacky medieval theme-park, but they did list five or six types of beer on one of the mock velvet scrolls, so we sat down despite the fact it was almost deserted.

The menu was all mock-medieval too, with dishes for “our little knights”, for example. We assume that referred to children? Like many pubs in Heidelberg, they were clearly trying to cater to the Japanese and Americans “doing Europe” by offering beer by the litre and pretzels, Bavaria-stylee.

However, we then noticed this dreadful beer mat (above), which was totally at odds with the rest of the branding of the place. We couldn’t work out whether it was supposed to be a trendy brewpub, a tourist trap, or possibly a brothel.

Only one thing for it – try the beer. In amongst the usual pils and weizen, they also offered a dunkle-weizen (“Schwarze Wonne”) and a Zwickl, which sounded more exciting than it was. The beer was drinkable, although tasted a bit home-brew-like, as with many trendy brewpubs in Germany. We wondered if the pub would be better off located outside the main part of town, where they could drop all the faux-medieval stuff and concentrate on the beer and the home-made bread.

I’ve since had a chance to look at their website. You can find it here, but I warn you, you’ll be greeted by a dreadful jingle and a video featuring naked ladies. I’ve seen some pretty tacky sub-porn on German beer sites before, but this takes the biscuit.

For those of you that haven’t followed the link (well done!), I can tell you that you don’t need much German to understand how Welde want to market their beer. There’s little mention of the range of products, and a lot of mentions of ladies with bierdeckels for bras.

Talk about a confused marketing strategy. If you’re just going for the saucy angle, why bother making a Zwickl and other seasonal specials? If you’re proud of the beer, why undermine it with awful gimmicks or cod-medieval toss?

Boak

Notes

“Brauhaus & Backwerk” is right opposite St Martin’s Church in the main square, next to a kebab shop with pretensions. We may have the name slightly wrong, but you can’t miss it. We rather enjoyed the pils, tacky marketing or not.

Heidelberg does have loads of great pubs and interesting local brews, so we’ll put up some more about it in due course.