Tag: advertising

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Well, it sure makes a change from crap gags and jiggling boobies

Lager advertising was my route into all this.  Between the ages of 18 and 22 the ads for Carling and Heineken made me want a career in advertising, and a decade later it was working on the ads for Stella Artois (back when when both the ads and the beer were good) and Heineken that lit my beer passion.

But I’ve never seen a campaign like this one for VB (sorry, embedding is disabled).
It’s discussed here by advertising online magazine Contagious, who show how it’s being elaborated with a website where people can send their own contributions, and encourages donations to the cause (I don’t want to give away the subject till you’ve actually watched it). The magazine also asks if the campaign is in good taste – it’s bound to attract controversy.
Part of me wants to be angry that big advertisers are trivialising something huge and emotive in order to sell beer.  But my beer head tells me that’s wrong – this ad is all about beer, the beer moment, what beer means and what it’s for.  No other drink (apart from, possibly, whisky) could even consider pulling this off, but it doesn’t feel false – it feels entirely appropriate.
And anyway, rational debate didn’t actually get a look in – this is the first beer ad that’s ever made me cry.

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Danger: Looking at this ad could turn you into an alcoholic

Here at Pete Brown’s Beer Blog we’ve never flinched from the truth.  We’ve always been brave, going where others fear to tread.  And I know that this sentiment is shared by our regular readers.  

That’s why, after long deliberations and sleepless nights spent agonising with my conscience, I’ve taken the decision to publish the following advert – I believe that you guys can handle it:
I know, I know, it’s shocking isn’t it?  The clear exhortation that the man should get steaming drunk and then tell his girlfriend she’s fat, before losing said girlfriend and embarking on a downward spiral of alcoholism that will see him sitting in the gutter in a pool of his own piss, is so powerful, so persuasive, that we should be thankful to the three members of the public who complained about it, and grateful to the Advertising Standards Authority for banning it from our streets on the grounds that “the combination of the text and the image of the man with an open beer can and half empty glass of beer was likely to be understood by consumers to carry the clear implication that the beer would give the man enough confidence to tell the woman that the dress was unflattering.” 
Sleep soundly in your beds tonight, readers, grateful that we live in a country where the authorities go to such inspired lengths to protect us from the dangers of a 440ml can of 4% ABV bitter.  

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Hurrah! A Decent Lager Ad Campaign!

Pilsner Urquell has a new poster campaign out – at Waterloo station the walkway between the Bakerloo and Jubilee lines is completely taken up by posters based on the theme that it’s the detail that matters.

They’re not going to win any creativity awards or convert millions to drinking Pilsner Urquell, but they’re doing something really important and deserve to succeed.
Each execution shows a perfect drinking moment: one is the bloke on the sofa with a curry ordered, the wife out for the evening and a great DVD about to start.  Another is a class reunion with the boys really on form.  Another is a couple with the kids in bed and a long, relaxed evening ahead.  
In each, the details are pointed out (‘DVD: Bladerunner, Director’s Cut’; ‘tomorrow: a long way off’).  And then it’s the detail in the beer that’s equally important (‘head: European’: ‘flavour: full-bodied’).  
I love this because there’s a misconception among large brewers that mainstream drinkers are scared of flavour, and this is not true.  It’s telling people about a premium lager that has genuine heritage and tastes of something.
But more than that, what they’ve managed to do here is portray a positive drinking experience and get away with it.  In each scenario, alcohol – beer – is an integral part of a perfect moment.  The drink is definitely helping the flow of banter or the curve of relaxation, and yet no-one could argue that each scenario shows responsible drinking – there’s suggestion of a beery buzz, but no hint of drinking to excess.
That might not sound like much, but in today’s hysterical anti-drink environment, it’s almost forbidden to suggest that the reason we drink is that we like the way it makes us feel.  It must have taken many iterations to get the balance of tone right, and no doubt someone somewhere will be offended by the suggestion that an adult can have a couple of beers without beating up an old lady and then dying a slow, lingering death from liver disease.  But well done to SABMiller for putting a stake in the ground on behalf of proper drinking.

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The Death of a Thousand Cuts

Ever wondered why Stella Artois had the gall to call itself ‘Reassuringly Expensive’?

It goes back to the yuppie-tastic eighties, when the brand really was a cut above its rivals. At the time, most lagers in the UK were brewed to around 3.5%, pale imitations of the European brews they claimed to be. Stella never compromised in order to get into pubs – it was the full 5.2%, sat pretty much on its own in this category, and was therefore comparatively more expensive and premium than its rivals. But ABV wasn’t the only measure of worth.

Stella was celebrated in beautifully-written, long-copy press ads – the kind you don’t see any more in our attention-deficient age. This one’s my favourite:

I dug this ad out because I’ve been thinking about the campaign in the context of an apocryphal story in marketing that’s usually attributed to a leading soup brand. Every year, the story goes, the manufacturer cut the cost fractionally by saving money on ingredients. Every year, a bowl of soup made to the old recipe and one made to the newer, cheaper recipe is brought to the MD, who is challenged to taste the difference, and he can’t. One year a new MD comes in, can’t taste any difference, and says, ‘bring me a bowl made to the recipe from ten years ago’. This causes some consternation, but eventually they manage to find the recipe and recreate last decade’s product. When everyone tastes this compared to the latest version, the difference is incredible – they’re hawking a shadow of what the product used to be, and didn’t even know it.
Now let’s come back to the Stella press ad. Great advertising works in a very simple way. You make a bold and attention-grabbing claim, and then you give the consumer reasons to believe this claim.
The above ad is a beautiful gag about how expensive the beer is. But why is it so expensive? You might not be able to read the copy from the image (though you might be able to enlarge it if you click on it), so let me tell you:
  • Stella Artois is only brewed with the best female Saaz hops
  • The beer is malted only with Europe’s finest barley
  • Unlike other, cheaper lager beers, Stella is lagered for six weeks

Taking those in turn: Stella does still use Saaz hops. But it clearly uses far fewer of them than it once did. Stella used to perform poorly in blind taste tests because it had a distinctly more bitter character than the British lager-drinking palate was used to. Taste Stella side-by-side with Budvar, even Kronenbourg today, and this is no longer the case. At a recent seminar on lager organised by the British Guild of Beer Writers, former Stella head brewer Paul Buttrick diplomatically explained that large-scale brewers generally are using fewer hops than they once did, which means that “Many beers that became global brands have less distinctive character than they originally had”.Malted using only Europe’s finest barley? Stella now proudly advertises the fact that it is brewed with maize which, far from being reassuringly expensive, is a more economical source of fermentable sugar than barley, and produces a blander beer. Stella’s beautifully-produced website, which harks back to an entirely fictitious origin of the brand in 1366 (they word it very carefully, never actually claiming that Stella was first brewed in 1366, but leaving you with a very strong impression that it was) doesn’t address the issue that maize is indigenous to North America – which wasn’t discovered for another 126 years.Fermented for six weeks? Oh, my aching sides. To be fair, there is at least a basis for a debate here, one raging between brewing traditionalists and those who have to deal with the reality of the economics of modern brewing. The latter claim you simply don’t need to condition beer for as long as we used to, that modern fermenters and ingredients can achieve the same results over a shorter time period. That may well be so, but whatever the optimal period now is, Stella is lagered for a far shorter time than many of its rivals – a week is now standard in lager. I’ve heard from an authoritative source – but without being able to get confirmation I’d better leave it vague – that Stella is fermented for considerably less time even than that.On its website, Stella claims that it is still brewed “with the same process of mixing and fermentation as in the old days”. I suppose your view on whether or not this is a bare-faced lie that insults both the drinker and the brand itself depends on how closely you define the word ‘process’. I used to love this beer – both the brand and the product itself. I was proud to have my stint working on the ad campaign. I think the ad above demonstrates exactly why I no longer feel the same way. I suspect that if a batch of Stella was brewed to the spec it had ten or fifteen years ago, and if we were permitted to taste it side-by-side with the modern version, Inbev would be the proud inheritors of one of marketing’s most enduring and revealing fables.

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