Tag: women

Categories
Beer history featuredposts pubs

The sensible Miss Orme and the life of the barmaid, 1892

Edwardian barmaids.

In 1892, Eliza Orme undertook a painstaking investigation into the working lives of barmaids, producing a report which takes us back to the pubs of the past with incredible vividness.

Eliza Orme was an interesting woman. She was the first woman in England to get a degree in law, in 1888, as Dr Leslie Howsam, who has studied Orme’s life, explains here:

[She] was 39 years old and already unofficially ‘practicing’ law out of an office in London’s Chancery Lane where she and a colleague prepared the paperwork for property transactions, patent registrations, wills, settlements, and mortgages. ‘I “devilled” for about a dozen conveyancing counsel who kept me busily employed on drafts they wanted done in a hurry, and for twenty-five years I found it both an interesting and profitable employment’, Orme recalled in a 1901 interview. This support-level work was the only legal employment open to women, who were not permitted either to be called to the bar or join the Law Society. It was only a small part, however, of Eliza Orme’s reputation as a public figure.

An early feminist, Miss Orme was a firm believer in allowing women to work in whichever industries they chose and was a member of the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women.

Through this, she ended up as Senior Lady Assistant Commissioner to the Royal Commission on Labour, overseeing a small team of Lady Assistant Commissioners.

Portrait photo.
Eliza Orme c.1900.

After the Commission decided at a meeting in March 1892 to undertake research into the working lives of women, Orme dispatched her team around the country, from Bristol to the Western Isles, to investigate various industries such as textile mills, chocolate factories and stocking making.

Continue reading “The sensible Miss Orme and the life of the barmaid, 1892”
Categories
News

News, nuggets and longreads 4 May 2019: ramen, gin, kveik

A frothy glass of beer.

Here’s all the beer-related gubbins that caught our eye and seemed bookmarkworthy in the past week, from ramen amateurs to the perceived sophistication of gin.

First, though, some bits of news on the health and trajectory of specific breweries, which we expect to be including in these round-ups quite a bit in the coming months.

Northern Monk, which was one of the breweries we’d heard might be on the verge of takeover, has announced that Active Partners has taken a less than 25% stake in the company. (We’re beginning to learn the code: that probably means something like a 24.5% stake.) In their announcement, they acknowledge having batted away offers from larger breweries.

Meanwhile, in London, Redchurch seems to be undergoing some turmoil. It has apparently filed notice of intention to appoint an administrator with the civil courts, and changed ownership. (Is it us, or is the launch of crowdfunding increasingly reliable as an indicator that a brewery is either going to fold, or get sold?)

Continue reading “News, nuggets and longreads 4 May 2019: ramen, gin, kveik”
Categories
News

News, Nuggets and Longreads 13 April 2019: Peroni, Pricing, Perceptions

Sign on the wall of a Belgian bar.

Here’s everything that struck us as interesting or readworthy in the past week, from notes on enamel signs to news of the CAMRA AGM.

First, a suggestion for a different way of thinking about beer from Stan Hieronymus:

What if we tasted beer in some sort of historic reverse? That is, starting with a particular type of beer as it is brewed today, and following it with previous episodes of the same beer… I ask this, and ask it this way, because the Game of Thrones returns Sunday, and like Zak Jason I didn’t start watching the series when it debuted in 2011 and haven’t since.

Enamel Orval signs.
SOURCE: Eoghan Walsh/Brussels Beer City.

At Brussels Beer City Eoghan Walsh has turned his attention to an aspect of Belgian beer culture we’ve been aware of without really thinking about – who makes all those enamel signs you see in bars?

Emaillerie Belge is the last enamel advert producer in the Low Countries, and it has been making ad panels for Belgian breweries for almost a century… The company survived a tumultuous 20th century and several flirtations with bankruptcy. Now under new management, it’s working to recapture the glory days of the enamel ad industry, betting that its small scale, custom, and high quality output can succeed against low-cost, industrial enamel producers.

Continue reading “News, Nuggets and Longreads 13 April 2019: Peroni, Pricing, Perceptions”
Categories
Beer history marketing

Guinness: a nice, interesting drink for nice, interesting women, 1977-79

In 1977-78, grappling with falling sales and quality problems, Guinness commissioned yet another marketing strategy in the hope of turning things around. One idea was to appeal to young women.

We’ve just finished scanning and cataloguing the collection of Guinness material we wrote about a few times last year. These marketing strategy documents (there are several) are full of fascinating details, not least in the annotations in pencil by (we assumed from context) Alan Coxon, the head brewer at Park Royal to whom these documents belonged.

Here’s what the 1977-78 document says under ‘Strategy & Objectives – Women’:

i) To recruit to more regular drinking the younger female drinker who identifies with the assurance, maturity and independence associated with Guinness for women.

ii) To reduce defection from Guinness by reinforcing the loyalty of existing frequent and less frequent users.

The second group were likely to be ‘older and poorer’, the kind of people who’d traditionally drunk Guinness, but the other group were a new target:

[Younger], socially active and better off. Guinness may already be a part of their drinking repertoire, though remote. These are likely to be C1 C2 women aged 25 to 44.

Here, though, Alan Coxon had some thoughts of his own, neatly marked in the margin:

I just do not believe in the possibility of this. It is not a young woman’s drink, surely. If we get it right it will have the wrong image for young women & surely we cannot expect them to like it!!

The proposed creative approach for appealing to young women was interesting, too, based on ‘the correct blending of four key elements’:

i) The user-image of a self-assured woman who is independent, sociable and healthy; equally at ease in both a man’s and woman’s world.

ii) The product as a unique, attractive, long drink, natural and enjoyable.

iii) The mood as one of relaxed and sociable enjoyment.

iv) The quality and style of the advertising as attractive, credible and contemporary (rather than fashionable or trendy).

The brand position reached as a result of this creative approach should be:

“Guinness is the drink for the self-assured woman.”

Finally, there were suggestions on how to reach women. With television reserved for male-orientated adverts, the idea was to place ads targeting women in magazines – ‘their personal medium’.

How did all this go? Fortunately, we have some handy follow-up information, from the next year’s marketing plan, covering 1978-79. It suggests that double-page spreads did run in women’s magazines (we’d love to track some of these down) and that they were felt to be successful enough to continue with.

An amusing punchline, though, is a restatement of the marketing objective:

The primary task of the advertising is to change attitudes about the kind of woman who drinks Guinness: to oversimplify, ‘Guinness is a nice, interesting drink which is drunk by nice, interesting women.’

UPDATE 08/03/2019: Jon Urch, who works for Guinness, sent us a copy of one of the ads, which we’ve now added as the main image above.

Categories
Franconia Germany News

News, Nuggets & Longreads 12 May 2018: Bass, Bavaria, Bambini

A derelict pub in Bristol.

Here’s everything that grabbed our attention in the world of beer and pubs in the past week, from the masculinity of beer to the fascination of Bass.

Dea Latis, an industry group dedicated to promoting beer to women, and challenging the idea that beer is a male preserve. It commissioned a study from YouGov into women’s attitudes to beer which is summarised here, with a link to the full report:

Beer Sommelier and Dea Latis director Annabel Smith said: “We know that the beer category has seen massive progress in the last decade – you only need to look at the wide variety of styles and flavours which weren’t available widely in the UK ten years ago. Yet it appears the female consumer either hasn’t come on the same journey, or the beer industry just isn’t addressing their female audience adequately. Overtly masculine advertising and promotion of beer has been largely absent from media channels for a number of years but there is a lot of history to unravel. Women still perceive beer branding is targeted at men.”

We’ve already linked to this once this week but why not a second time? It’s a substantial bit of work, after all.

There’s some interesting commentary on this, too, from Kirst Walker, who says: “If we want more women in the beer club, we have to sweep up the crap from the floors and admit that flowers are nice and it pays not to smell of horse piss. How’s that for a manifesto?”

Bass Pale Ale mirror, Plymouth.

Ian Thurman, AKA @thewickingman, was born and brought up in Burton-upon-Trent and has a lingering affection for Bass. He has written a long reflection on this famous beer’s rise and fall accompanied by a crowd-sourced directory of pubs where it is always available:

It’s difficult for me to be unemotional about Draught Bass. It was part of growing up in Burton. But what are the facts.

The EU AB InBev careers’ website accurately describes the relative importance of their brands to the company.

“The UK has a strong portfolio of AB InBev brands. This includes, global brands, Stella Artois and Budweiser, international brands, Beck’s, Leffe and Hoegaarden, as well as local brands, including Boddingtons and Bass.”

We’re fascinated by the re-emergence of the Cult of Bass as a symbol of a certain conservative attitude to pubs and beer. You might regard this article as its manifesto.

Continue reading “News, Nuggets & Longreads 12 May 2018: Bass, Bavaria, Bambini”