Tag: Molson Coors

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Two contrasting responses to the growth of craft beer from two different big brewers

The big global brewers are coming for craft beer.  And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Craft beer, interesting beer, flavourful beer, microbrewed beer, whatever you want to call it and however you insist on defining it, is the only part of the beer market where there is any significant margin. In First World, mature, developed beer markets, brewers have willingly commoditised big brands and increasingly treat them no different from pet food or toilet roll.  The power of retailers has stripped any profitability out of these brands for the manufacturer, which is why all the big guys are now focusing on developing markets such as China, India and Brazil.  The huge scrap over who gets to own Tiger beer shows just how important these markets are to the giants of beer.

But the guys left in boring old Europe and North America still need something to do.  They can’t simply give up on beer’s homelands.  So they’re hearing all this noise about craft, and coming over to see what all the fuss is about.

This year I’ve had several conversations with global brewers about craft – from the very rich companies who say “please tell us in detail who all the main players are, the secrets of their success, what the main drivers of craft are, who’s drinking it and where it’s going to go,” and then decide they don’t need to know after all when I ask for a fee in return for this insight, to those who seem genuinely interested in developing more of a craft-like arm to their business.

You know it’s getting serious when you see a ‘segmentation’ of craft beers buyers, like I did this summer.  I used to do this kind of thing for a living, and it requires lots of expensive research to put together.  There were four different kinds of craft beer drinker in this study – each segment was a different size, with a different level of knowledge and different reasons for drinking craft.  And you know what?  You were in one of those segments.  Yes, YOU.  So was I.

So the big boys are going to start flirting with craft, to see if they can take some dollars, pounds and euros from hopheads and beer geeks.  In fact, they’ve already started – with Anheuser-Busch having dabbled with a half-decent pumpkin beer, Blue Moon of course, Carslberg’s Jacobsen range, and now, new offerings from A-B and Carlsberg that talk about ‘craft values’ in their launch press releases.

Some of these things are going to be horrible.  Some will be badly thought-out and misconstrued.  Some will even be insulting to the intelligence and the palate of craft beer drinkers.

But will they all be?  I don’t think so.  We all know there are some very talented brewers within the global giants. The question is, will any of them be allowed to make interesting beer that will then be given sympathetic support by the rest of the organisation?

In recent weeks, I’ve learned about two different approaches to craft by two different beery behemoths.

One is excellent, the other is cynical, lazy and contemptuous.  Let’s deal with the good one first – no reading ahead, I’m sure you can guess who the poor relation is.

Last month I went to see my mates Steve and Rudgie in Toronto.  Steve is the world’s greatest beer writer* and Rudgie works for MolsonCoors.** Rudgie will be familiar to readers of Hops & Glory as one of the key men who made my whole trip to India possible, and is now the world’s greatest Professional Canadian.  (Not bad for someone who spent the first three and a half decades of his life being a northerner from Warrington.  But he says al-oo-minum now and everything.)

So anyway, last time I went to see Rudgie, he took me to Creemore Springs, a craft lager brewer in the heart of Ontario that proudly boasts of being ‘a hundred years behind the times’ and was bought by MolsonCoors seven and a half years ago.

Having watched what happens when giant brewers buy little brewers, you could be forgiven for expecting these excellent beers, including a sublime kellerbier, to have become blandised, cheapened and bastardised.  Instead, MC invested in increasing capacity and worked on spreading distribution, and simply left the brewing alone, with the clear admission that if they did get involved they would screw it up, because they didn’t understand how the market worked at that level.

In a global market that usually looks no further ahead than two years for return on investment, if they were going to screw it up, they would have done so by now.

Then they took over Vancouver’s Granville Island Brewing – possibly the first craft beer I ever drank when I spent a lot of time in Canada in the 1990s.  Same arrangement.  Granville Island gets sales and distribution support, and doesn’t get accountants sniffing around the hopping rates.

Last year, this flirtation with craft was expanded and consolidated.  Molson Coors bought a brewpub the founders didn’t want any more and created the Toronto Beer Academy.

Here, the brewery makes a range of interesting beers as authentically as possible, from classic styles around the world to new craft creations.

They’re brewed by good brewers who want to make good beer (and have significantly improved the old kit so they can do so), and are sold on site.  Creemore Springs and Granville Island beers are also sold here, in a bar that celebrates beer in all its shapes and colours.
Together, Creemore Springs, Granville Island and Beer Academy are now part of an independent unit within Molson Coors called the Six Pints Specialty Beer Co.  It’s part of MC, but not controlled by it.  It runs as a separate unit, to different rules. There is no MolsonCoors branding here, and no MolsonCoors brands are stocked.
The bar holds brewmasters dinners, and seminars on beer ingredients and the brewing process.  There are new beer launch nights, beer and cheese matching evenings and beer dinners.  All stuff a good microbrewer should do, and done well.
Talking to the guys who run this, there’s a philosophy of enlightened self-interest.  It’s only going to work if it’s done right – and that means not doing it the MC way.  But if it’s done well, it might just create a halo effect that makes people think a little bit more of beer in general, in relation to wine and other drinks.  And that would, ultimately, help the rest of the MC business. 
I’m not saying it’s the best beer I’ve ever tasted, and I’m not saying Beer Academy is the best beer bar I’ve ever been in.  I am saying that this is proper craft beer, served in a proper craft beer bar, and that there is no evidence whatsoever of the ultimate owners trying to screw anything up with short cuts, dumbing down, cost cutting or corporate bullshit.
It’s an extraordinarily intelligent response to the growth of craft beer.
Compare that then, with the billboard spotted in Los Angeles by ace beer photographer Robert Gale:
Photo: Robert Gale – his blog has photos of way nicer beery stuff than this
That’s right: the biggest brewery conglomerate in the world reacts to the growth of craft beer by trying to claim that one of it’s top three priority brands for global domination is somehow in the same space as microbrewers and craft beer.

No shame. And no clue whatsoever.

You might feel that you would always want to support a true micro rather than a big brewer, and that’s a view that’s difficult to argue with.

But not all big brewers are the same.  They all want a piece of craft.  Personally I’ll be welcoming the stuff they do well, in the hope of killing off the crap, insulting stuff as quickly as possible.

* In joke. Not saying it isn’t true of course.

** Full disclosure following the admission that I do some consultancy in this area – while Rudgie is a mate, I have not been paid any consultancy or PR fee by MolsonCoors, and have had no advisory role or any other involvement in what’s discussed here

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Do women need their own beer?

Alongside beer styles, craft beer, cask versus keg and other such burning issues, the notion of ‘beer for women’ reared its head again this week with Molson Coors’ launch of Animee, a new attempt to persuade the 79% of British women who don’t currently drink beer to start doing so.  I was at the launch on Monday night. So was Melissa Cole, who is true to form in her outspoken views on the subject here.  Sophie Atherton also weighed in on the Guardian blog here.

I agree with the gist of what both are saying, but not on every single point.  I also get a sort of itching in my brain when commenters who have not seen, smelled or tasted these products dismiss them as ‘piss’.  How do you know?  Even when I slag off something like Stella Black, I taste the damn stuff first.

I believe the launch of Animee is misguided and flawed, but there are some good points in there if you look hard enough.  I’ll sum this up in a list of positives and negatives, to make it easy.

Negative:
The whole idea of a beer for women in the first place. It’s never worked, because it’s not what’s needed.  I’m not surprised Melissa feels patronised – I’d feel the same if someone tried to flog me a ‘wine for men’. As Melissa points out, women don’t want a product that segregates them – they just want a product that doesn’t actively alienate them.  Wine, cocktails, cider and premium spirits are neither masculine nor feminine, and they all seem to be doing just fine.  The only reason beer is overtly masculine is the long heritage of macho advertising in the UK – beer is far more unisex in other countries.  In Spain, 40% of total beer volume is drunk by women, and it’s mainstream lager, same as here.  (Nice mainstream lager though, it has to be said.)

Positive:
The fact that Molson Coors are trying.  This was presented on Monday as part of a broader programme of ideas and initiatives to really promote beer across the board.  Molson Coors are a big multinational brewer who talk about beer in marketing speak (the subject of another piece). But I get the impression they do actually care about beer.  They show signs of understanding it, and respecting it.  Growing Sharps and Worthington are as much part of their plan as boosting Carling – which, by the way, also got a shout on Monday night.  A new 4.8% ‘premium’ version, Carling Chrome, is bland, pretty tasteless, but not watery and without the nasty aftertaste some of these beers have.  On the beer for women thing, they’ve spoken to tens of thousands of women and really got to the heart of what’s keeping them from beer.

Negative:
Given all that research, I just don’t understand Animee as a response to it.  The main barriers are all about image – not the product.  So why launch a different product?  I find the beers that convert women who ‘don’t like’ beer tend to be very strongly flavoured – American IPAs or Imperial porters and stouts – because these women are currently drinking wine that has comparable characteristics.  I don’t see the need to launch a product that doesn’t actually look or taste like beer at all, and don’t understand how a product that doesn’t look or taste like beer, that has different language around it from beer (‘clear filtered’, ‘lemon’ and ‘rose’ anyone?) is going to attract women to drinking beer more generally.  It’s actually only beer because Molson Coors say it is – it’s not going to change anyone’s attitude to what ‘beer’ is or can be.  Any women who drink this will do so despite it being called beer.

Positive:
It might not be beer, but actually I thought the product wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t remotely like beer, but I did enjoy it, especially the clear filtered one.  Light and refreshing, it would be a pleasant summer drink, an alternative to mainstream cider.  I also think the packaging, if you look at it for what it is, manages to be unisex and quite stylish, a few beers cues here and there, not too girly.  I know, I know, it’s in clear glass.  That is a marketing decision because – and I say this as someone who has done countless focus groups over the last 15 years – every single drinker who is not knowledgable enough about beer to know about light strike says they overwhelmingly prefer clear glass.  It just looks better, and for many drinkers, beer is about style over substance.  Of course I don’t agree with that or like it, but it’s true.

So overall, I suspect Animee will go the same way as all other attempts to market a beer specifically for women.  But I hope Molson Coors don’t give up.  I hope they will try some different strategies.  And I hope other big brewers will follow their example.  I also hope they will read the comments from the many women responding to Melissa’s and Sophie’s pieces saying there are beers for women, in the shape of cask ale.  And I also hope they will look very closely at this:

Project Venus is a collaboration between female brewers. On 28th July, Kathy Britton, of Oldershaw Brewery, Sara Barton of Brewster’s, Michelle Kelsall from Offbeat Brewery, Sophie de Ronde from Brentwood Brewing Company and Sue Hayward from The Waen Brewery will gather at Oldershaw’s to brew their second cask ale. The whole thing will be filmed by Marverine Cole, AKA Beer Beauty.

Of course Project Venus is tiny compared to Animee.  But I’d be fascinated to see a side-by-side tasting of the two, and see which women prefer.

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Exclusive: Wanted – New Brewer For One of World’s Best Beers

Perfection

If you love beer, and think you’re a good brewer, this is like Masterchef and Pop Idol rolled into one.

Steve Wellington, Jedi Master Brewer of Worthington White Shield, is looking for a new Padawan.

White Shield has long been a legendary, semi-mythical beer, with a hardcore of devotees sighing wistfully at its very name, a few others going “Dunno, can’t see what all the fuss is about,”and a vast majority in the middle saying, “White Shield? Is that still around?” or “White who? Never seen it.”

For me, it’s one of the best beers in the world.  It traces an unbroken lineage back to the 1830s as one of the genuine IPAs brewed in Burton on Trent and sold in Calcutta.  When I was researching Hops and Glory I found records of it being imported to the Calcutta docks.  It was dwarfed in size by Bass and Allsopps. but did steady business.  Allsopp’s is no more, and Bass is in trouble.  White Shield has certainly had its ups and downs, almost disappeared after brewing was contracted out from Burton, but was rescued and revived by Steve about a decade ago.  Since then, it’s won Champion Bottled Beer of Britain and Steve has been named Brewer of the Year.

But all this was happening on a tiny, ancient three-barrel museum plant, that looked lovely, had a personality of its own, but was showing her age.

That’s why, at a time when most UK macro brewers were disinvesting in ale, Molson Coors took the relatively enlightened step of giving Steve a brand new, state-of-the-art £1m brewery to play with in the newly reopened National Brewery Centre in Burton.  The macro has seen that there is a future in ale and decided to take a bit of an interest.

The new plant has been operational since the start of the year.  So far, the only thing Molson Coors have done wrong with the new William Worthington Brewery is let marketing have the final say on the names of the new beers that come out of the plant alongside White Shield.  Marketing has misunderstood the brand and declared that every beer has to have ‘Shield’ in its name.  So the first seasonal is called ‘Spring Shield’.  Nice beer, silly name – the master brand is William Worthington, guys.

Anyway, within a few months the new brewery was working at capacity, and today Molson Coors will announce that it brewed more beer in the first quarter of 2011 than the old girl did in the whole of 2010.  So successful is it, they will also be announcing the search for a new brewer to work with Steve and his fellow brewer Jo White.  It’s a dream job: one of Britain’s oldest and most revered brands, on one of Britain’s most modern and advanced small breweries.

Interested brewers should visit http://molsoncoors.com/en/People.aspx for more details.

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Molson Coors buys Sharps!

Transfer window madness: Burton-on-Trent buys Cornwall

Yes, it’s the same story that will be appearing on about eight or nine UK beer blogs at this very moment:

Burton-based Molson Coors, brewers of Carling and Grolsch, have just announced the purchase of Cornwall’s Sharp’s Brewery, home of the fast-rising Doom Bar and a range of wonderfully eclectic, sometimes even visionary, but difficult to get hold of beers from top brewer Stuart Howe.

There’s not too much info on the value of the deal, what it means for breweries and brands etc.  The press release quote from Molson Coors CEO Mark Hunter is:

“The Doom Bar brand is modern and progressive.  It has a loyal following and excellent reputation amongst consumers and customers alike and has the potential to become a truly extraordinary brand. We have a wealth of experience with this type of venture and an excellent track record of building brands across all markets. We respect and want to preserve the unique culture of Sharp’s Brewery and the special appeal of their brands to beer drinkers.”

Stuart Howe adds:

“We are delighted to be joining the Molson Coors team, all of whom are passionate about Sharp’s Brewery and committed to the Doom Bar brand. We are incredibly proud to be voted the best regional cask beer by our customers, with the support of Molson Coors we’re looking forward to being recognised as the best cask beer in the country.”

So what does it all mean? Why has it happened? Here are some initial, ill-informed thoughts and speculations.

Firstly, before we get into the detailed ramifications, this represents a major change in direction for the UK cask ale market.  In four years of writing the Cask Report, we’ve been saying that the big national brewers have abandoned cask ale and left it to the regionals and micros.  Molson Coors have been talking a good cask ale game for a while now without doing much to deliver against it until recently.  This marks the creation, or reinvention, of a national brewer with a big commitment to cask ale.

Of course there are good and bad sides to that.  Many will ask why MC can’t just leave cask ale to people who care about it.

But this is actually a great fit.  To beer aficionados, Doom Bar is an acceptable but very ordinary beer.  And yet it is massively popular with mainstream drinkers.  It looks contemporary on the bar and recruits new people to the ale market.  It’s taken on by many pubs who are looking to trial cask for the first time.  Anyone who met the previous owners will have got the impression that they were aggressively building the brand, attempting to turn it into a national cask ale brand as quickly as possible.  It’s only been going since 1994 and the original recipe was from a kit, so it’s not as if there is any heritage here that’s about to be trashed by a big corporate.  There’s no better brand for MC to acquire – mainstream, modern, little specialness to lose.  With glorious hindsight, this is just the logical next step for Doom Bar’s evolution.

So how does it fit with the Worthington brand, also given a reboot by Molson Coors with the building of the new William Worthington Brewery (which I wrote about in this week’s Publican magazine)?  Doom Bar is at the moment stronger in the south, while Worthington’s is bigger in the Midlands.  Mark Hunter told me that draught White Shield and the long-awaited Red Shield will be focusing on a radius around Burton.  My prediction is that MC will aggressively build Doom Bar as a national cask ale brand.  My hope is that they’ll then nurture White Shield/Red Shield as something a bit more special.  If that’s what happens to Doom Bar it’ll be good for cask ale overall, making the gateway to the category that bit bigger for the kind of drinker who doesn’t have the confidence to seek out flavourful beers without the reassurance of big brands. (Yes, I know I just described Doom Bar as a flavourful beer, spare me the wisecracks – I’m talking relatively).

And what of Stuart Howe and the rest of what he does at Sharp’s?

Those of us who have met Stuart know he finds brewing Doom Bar a bit of a chore – it’s growing massively, it’s a routine to brew – and he has a huge imagination. The line from MC is that Stuart “Stays doing what he’s doing but supported by more investment in the brewery and greater distribution capability.” I’d like to think this means he’ll be staying on in the new company, and will be given freedom to experiment, getting some of his Belgian-influenced ales out into the market properly. My mouth also waters at the prospect of collaborations between him and Worthington brewery legend Steve Wellington.

But whether or not this will actually this will happen within the well-meaning but slower, more corporate, conservative set-up of Molson Coors, I’m more doubtful about.  Stuart won’t hang around if he’s just brewing Doom Bar on a bigger kit, and if he does eventually jump ship, you can bet your life it will be to start something new with a greater focus on innovative beers.  So the craft beer drinker still wins out.

I’d say the only people who could/should be pissed off or alarmed by this are the regional brewers like Greene King, Marston’s and Wells & Young’s, who now face a serious new contender.  It’s going to be interesting to see how they react.

Meanwhile, Howe’s blog is going to make even more compelling reading than normal!

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How risk aversion is choking big brewers

I’m in Rochester, New York.  Yesterday, we went to this shop:

This is a very big beer shop.

I’ll save the beer porn pictures for later, because there’s something else that cut through my gibbering excitement and imminent worry about weight limits on the flight home.

Blue Moon.  It’s not my favourite beer.  I find it too sweet, and the serve with a slice of orange a bit forced.  But I’m glad it has been launched in the UK.  I’m glad Molson Coors are at least showing recognition of the need to develop a craft beer portfolio if they want to prosper long term.  And I know various people who really do like the beer.

With my marketing hat on – and because there are people working on Blue Moon whom I count as good friends – I also know that the launch of Blue Moon has taken an awfully long time and cost a serious amount of money.  Not because they fucked up (they didn’t) but because that’s how big companies work.

In Beers of the World, they also stocked these:

Instantly, to my mind, Blue Moon becomes a much more interesting beer.  I’m curious about trying the range.  I don’t expect these beers to blow my socks off, but now we have a global brewer launching a series of seasonal beers and I think ‘Yay, they’re finally getting it!’

So given that these beers have already been manufactured, tested and distributed, why don’t we see them in the UK?

I may be completely wrong (and if I am, I’m certain to be told so in no uncertain terms very soon) but I think this is a perfect example of how the systems and processes of big brewers are stifling their creativity.  I’ve worked on ‘New Product Development’ (NPD) projects a hundred times.  These companies are risk averse – they actively reward caution.  A typical ‘critical path’ to even get to a regional test launch for a new brand is at least a year long and costs hundreds of thousands of pounds.  There will be at least two sets of focus groups.  Both the ‘liquid’ and the brand positioning will be tested against various target groups, both at concept stage and much closer to pre-launch.  Consumers will be asked their opinion on everything, down to the shade of orange on the box.  At each significant juncture there will be a ‘gate’ where the team responsible has to present to the board or whoever, to convince them not to even launch the thing, but just that it’s worthwhile proceeding to the next stage of research and development.

I’ve maybe worked on eight or nine different new beer launches for big brewers in the last few years.  I think one of them saw the light of day – and despite all that investment and caution, it failed.

Look – here are the beers, sitting unsold in a big beer shop in North America.  What’s stopping some bright, beer loving person at Molson Coors (there are plenty of them) simply saying, why don’t we ship a palette of each one over to the UK, stick ’em in places like the Rake, the White Horse, North Bar, go down there and chat to punters and see how they go down?

That’s what a micro brewer would do.  That’s what the likes of James Clay are doing with brands like Saranac, Flying Dog, Stone and Goose Island.  You might take a bath on one shipment.  But you’ll probably make it up on the others.

Multinational brewers in theory have an infrastructure that would make this very easy.  But it’s too much of a risk.  It has to go through the system.  I’ve no idea if Molson Coors are looking at bringing these seasonals to the UK, but if they are, it’s going to take a lot of research, a lot of time.

I’ve only singled Molson Coors out because it’s their beers I saw in the shop yesterday.  But all the big boys operate like this – it’s a general criticism.  And it’s not a criticism of the people who are genuinely passionate about beer in these organisations, it’s a criticism of the systems and processes that stifle them.  I’ve worked with many of their competitors and found them all the same.  Great for me, because it can mean up to several months of lucrative and much-needed freelance work.  Bad for them, because at the very least, the market will have moved on and developed between saying ‘let’s look at launching brand x’ and actually getting the product into pubs and bars.

Come on, Big Guys.  Take a chance.  Live a little.  Every single marketing text book I’ve read by gurus like Tom Peters urges businesses to embrace risk.  Brew Dog are at the other extreme – some of what they do is unspeakably bad, but I always support their stance because if they didn’t have the attitude to risk that produces the stinkers, we’d never see the likes of Paradox or 5am Saint either.  It nets out pretty positive in the end.  You don’t have to go as far as they do.  But really, what’s the worst that could happen?

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The Big Boys

Last week I posted yet another piece dissing A-B Inbev for their increasingly entertaining wrong-headedness.  It’s almost a weekly occurrence these days, and I got to wondering why I do it.  
I’m so glad I no longer spend much time in rooms like this.  Just as well really, given this post.
It must look like I have a vendetta against that particular company, perhaps motivated by sour grapes over the fact that I used to work for one of their advertising agencies.  I don’t, honestly – it’s just that they’re the only company who send me really stupid press releases, or who I see in the newspaper doing something so disturbing that I feel compelled to have a go at them for it.  If any other brewer – oh hang, on, sorry, they’re not a brewer, they’re an “FMCG marketing company that happens to sell beer” – if any other brewer sent me press releases about pointless line extensions, or had FIFA arrest and harass innocent civilians on their behalf, or systematically raped and killed one of the greatest beer brands ever, I’d be just as critical.  But, with the odd exception, they tend not to.
Some readers – people who are die-hard craft beer devotees – often comment on the fact that all I’m doing is calling attention to the universal follies perpetrated by big, ‘macro’ multinational brewers.  There’s a sense in some parts of the beer community that they’re all just as bad as each other.  But the frequency with which I attack A-B Inbev suggests they’re not.  
So I thought it might be fun to just look at the big megabreweries here in the UK and give a fair assessment of each of them, from a beer lover’s point of view, and from the point of view of someone who understands the realities of marketing a megabrand.  
These brewers can never just say “You know what? Let’s just stop selling these cheap but enormously successful tasteless lager brands and invest all our money in intriguing craft brews which are preferred by only a small minority of beer drinkers.”  But successful big business management is all about shrewd portfolio brand management. The niche beers of today may be the giants of tomorrow, and with a market that’s shrinking (except the craft beer part) you’d hope to see some consideration given to serious beer (which is also the only part of the beer market that can charge serious profit margins) , as well as a level of thoughtfulness in the big beer brands that doesn’t just approach drinkers from the lowest common denominator.  So here goes.
I know, I know.  Where to begin?

Lead brands in UK: Stella Artois, Becks, Budweiser
They used to be good – I think that’s where my background level of anger and frustration comes from – but increasingly they resemble the beer world’s Evil Empire.  To understand them properly you have to look at their constituent parts, and how they came together.  
In the late 90s Interbrew was a Belgian brewery that had gone global.  Stella Artois was a phenomenal success story in the UK which they attempted to replicate all over the world (something they’ve had a reasonable amount of success with, despite the disaster the brand has become in the UK).  They had a clever positioning as ‘The world’s local brewer’, which recognised the importance of local brands and regional differences.  
People talked about how Stella was an ‘ordinary’ lager in its home country, but this is Belgium we’re talking about – it was a perfectly decent, respectable pilsner style beer, even attracting praise from the likes of Roger Protz in the context of its home country.  
In taking Hoegaarden and Leffe international, Interbrew created the commercial end of the global ‘speciality beer’ market, a move that made things much easier for smaller craft brewers to reach a wider, curious market.  
Then came the merger with South American conglomerate Ambev, to form Inbev.  After boardroom politicking didn’t quite go as planned, the South Americans emerged as the dominant strategic force driving the company.  Whereas Inbev had had a culture focused on brand building, and enjoyed a deep heritage in interesting beer, Ambev was all about cost cutting – something that was easy to sell to a company that was cash-starved after the takeover.  Brands were rationalised, mainstream marketing principles were applied, and a focus was put on a few lead global brands.  At this point, any notion of beery romance left the company.  They clearly thought it was merely sentiment that saw Hoegaarden brewed in the town of Hoegaarden, or Stella matured for something resembling a decent lagering period, not realising that money invested in brands made them premium, and therefore loved, and therefore able to charge higher prices.  Inbev’s unofficial corporate slogan was surely “show us a cost and we’ll cut it”, with no thought given to how that cut might affect brand health long term.  Anyone who still believed beer was special in drinkers’ hearts and could not therefore be marketed the same way as washing powder or dog food was disappeared from the company, and replaced by marketing executives from Coca Cola Schweppes or Procter & Gamble – many of whom didn’t actually like beer.   
And then came the merger with Anheuser-Busch – a brewery that has long enjoyed a reputation for being fearsomely aggressive, and extraordinarily litigious.  They seem to actually resent the existence of any competitive brewer.  Interestingly though, as I argued in a recent lager seminar, while Budweiser may not be a very nice beer, it is certainly a high quality beer – look at the spec for it’s manufacture and I dare you not to at least admire them, even if, like me, you’d rather drink your own urine than the resulting beer.  I can see the bullying attitude surviving much longer than the commitment to brewing quality, sadly.
In the UK they’ve had some success, with Artois 4%, and helped make that 4% ‘quality’ band credible.  But at such a cost to the main Stella Artois brand, which used to be so good, but seems to have had everything that was good about it deliberately stripped from it: flavour, quality ingredients, a very successful association with film, great ads, the distinctive embossed can, the Queens tennis tournament – all gone.   
They also have Becks, a great survivor in the beer wars.  It still tastes of beer, but is a touch too metallic for some.  The Becks association with art is something I constantly refer to as a good example of successful sponsorship.
They have quite deliberately run Bass and Boddington’s – two beers that, in their own way used to be great – into the ground, withdrawing all marketing support, and have openly said they are completely uninterested in ale.  Hoegaarden and Leffe also seem increasingly unloved – they called the former spectacularly wrong when they tried to close the brewery. I’d argue that aggressively divesting from the only sectors of the market showing volume growth and significant margin shows you simply don’t understand the business you’re in.
So there you have it – a rapacious, all-devouring conglomerate, the world’s biggest brewer, run by people who neither respect nor understand beer.  That’s your problem, right there.  I’d dearly love someone from A-B Inbev to challenge me and prove me wrong.  But remember the Stella Black launch, the beer that’s “matured for longer”?  They’ve ignored my query about how long it’s actually brewed for.  The press release proves everything I’ve said – here’s a launch of a ‘quality’, ‘premium’ beer, with not one word of detail on the ingredients, brewing process or flavour profile of that beer.

Brewed in Yorkshire? Not for long, matey.

Lead brands in UK: Carlsberg, Tetleys, Tuborg
Feels lost, somehow.  
Carlsberg bought the remains of what used to be Allied Breweries, which had a bunch of interesting brands, and some infamously bad ones.  Renaming the company Carlsberg Tetley showed their direction, and then dropping the Tetley from the corporate name left no one in any doubt.  The decision to move Tetley’s cask production out of Yorkshire has led to a righteous outpouring from beer fans, but as an Evil Empire, Carlsberg is unconvincing.  They definitely called it wrong with Tetley’s, but they’ve been neglecting the brand for years.  I know specific people within the organisation and I know their commitment and enthusiasm for quality beer.  Clearly, their voices are not loud enough at the top level.  
Carlsberg UK is now seemingly no more than a branch office of Carlsberg in Denmark.  I’ve never had anything against Carlsberg the beer itself.  The proper ‘export’ beer is fine if unremarkable, and if pushed the 4% version is bland without being offensive to the palate like some of its competitors.  They’ve done a very successful job of marketing the beer with its association with the English football team and sponsorship of the European Cup.
What confuses me is that in Denmark Carlsberg responded to the rise of craft brewing with its Semper Ardens range, which were really good.  There were a couple of special ‘Jacobsen’ beers launched half-heartedly in the UK but no serious push was put behind them – I’ve never been sent any information about them, offered samples or anything like that, and I don’t know anyone who has – it’s a real shame.
Instead they put far more effort behind launching Tuborg in the UK.  When you already have a leading standard lager and a 5% export version, in a market that is declining and has too many interchangeable brands already, I’m baffled as to what the thinking was behind this.
They could be quite good, but they just seem to drift rather aimlessly in the wake of their bigger competitors.    

You can’t build a brand as successful as this without being a pain in the arse.

Lead brands in UK: Fosters, John Smiths, Kronenbourg, Newcastle Brown
An interesting company.  Before its takeover by Heineken, S&N was clearly focusing on lager.  It was good for them and good for the beer when they sold the Courage beers to Wells & Young’s, who took a neglected brand and made it feel loved again.  They regard John Smiths as a brand just for ageing working class men in working men’s clubs in the north, which I think is a travesty.  They’ve lost their way with it, totally.  When Smoothflow beers appeared in the mid-nineties, there was at least a commercial logic to taking out failed cask beer and launching a brand that was consistent (if dull) across the country.  But they also took cask out and replaced it with Smoothflow in its heartland, where the cask version had been working perfectly well.  This did more to send cask ale into a seemingly terminal decline at the time than any other single action.  
They’ve never totally got their lager brands but on the back of excellent distribution and advertising that occasionally hits the spot they’ve done well.  Fosters I find to be undrinkable – not just tasteless but offensive, and my failure to understand its popularity makes me wonder if I understand beer at all.  Kronenbourg, however, I kind of like.  Within its market it’s a good beer and one I order in pubs that don’t have any beer I really like.  They did some good line extensions on it, but I’ve spoken to people who worked on the launch of Kronenbourg Blanc (the wheat beer) and even they find it undrinkable.
We still don’t know what the takeover by Heineken is going to mean long term.  I have found the Dutch Heineken company incredibly frustrating to work with – they’re very arrogant.  But this arrogance was borne of a cultural belief that Heineken was simply the world’s best beer.  It’s not of course, but compare it to other big lager brands and it is a class apart.  It has a distinctive flavour profile, a bit sweet for some, but it’s a world away from what Stella has now become.  And the decision to simply axe the 3.4% cooking lager variant and launch Heineken as the genuinely imported, full strength beer they adore so much shows the opposite of the short termism evident in so many other parts of the market.
By buying S&N, Heineken now also owns Caledonian, home of Deuchars IPA.  There are already people saying that this beer has been dumbed down by its new owners – there are always people who sill say that.  But word is that Heineken like what they have there, and are at least doing some research into the cask beer market.
They’re always going to be about Fosters and Kronenbourg first and foremost, and a perusal of the UK website makes me feel distinctly uneasy.  I also wish they’d stop fucking up John Smiths.  But I suspect we’ll see some interesting things from them in the near future.  

One of the world’s greatest beers.  Brewed by the same people who brew Carling.

Lead brands in UK: Carling, Grolsch, Worthingtons, Coors Light
A game of two halves.  I love Carling as a brand, hate it as a product,  but when I was forced to drink it recently it wasn’t as bad as I thought.  There’s no point to Coors Light at all.  Grolsch is quite decent, another survivor with a distinctive taste (compared to its peers).  
You can read some bias into this one of you must, because Molson Coors helped me out with Hops and Glory.  But they could only do that because they had taken ownership of Worthington White Shield and not fucked it up.  The White Shield brewery was left to do what it wanted, indulged by its American corporate parent, and they now seem culturally the most attuned of the big boys to the cask revival.  That’s not saying much, but it is significant.  The fact that they are launching a new cask ale – Red Shield – is something none of their competitors can claim.  
The problem is that being so big, they’re so bloody slow.  Why is the Red Shield launch taking so long?  Why is the new cask ale brewery still not being built?  They’re going to struggle if they really do want to compete in this market.
Molson Coors also imports and markets Grolsch Weizen – one of the best wheat beers around – Zatec lager, Palm and Kasteel Cru.  Not everyone is going to like each of these beers, but they do show a genuine desire to do something different.  And when they own the number one mass-market lager in the country, you can only praise their decision to not just go all monocultural.  The speciality beers (and White/Red Shield) are marketed through an offshoot company, Different World Drinks, which specialises in sampling, education, and beer and food matching events. 
Molson Coors is now surely the best of a bad bunch.  With a bit more fluency and speed, they’d be a class apart from their competitors in terms of understanding and promoting decent beer.

The best beer marketing campaign of the last decade?

Lead brands in UK: Peroni, Pilsner Urquell
Smaller by some way than the other brewers listed here, SABMiller are able to perform more like a boutique brand specialist rather than mass market.  Peroni is a fascinating brand.  It’s kind of where Stella was ten or twelve years ago, and its owners are determined not to make the same mistakes that brand did.  It may not be all that as a beer, but it’s fine.  Where it excels is that has a premium image, adds something to the beer category, people seek it out and think of it as special.  Marketing it as a fashion brand rather than a beer brand was a stroke of marketing genius and one that other brewers should study.
Pilsner Urquell is a legendary beer.  They’ve changed it a bit since they acquired it, and had one or two attempted relaunches too many, but if left to incubate and find its own feet it could still become as famous and respected as it deserves to be. 
SAB Miller also deserve kudos for the non-brand specific research and general beer category promotion they do.  I’m always getting press releases from them that are interesting to read – stuff on beer etiquette, exhibitions of photography of beer culture from around the world and so on.  
This is a company that gets beer, understands it.  Some readers will be nonplussed at how I can praise a beer like Peroni.  I’m sure this company will have something that will interest those readers too before too long.

I like Guinness.  So sue me.

Lead brands in UK: Guinness, Red Stripe.
I like Guinness.  I know it’s a dumbed down version of what it should be but I’ve written before about why that is.  I just hope they don’t give in to dumbing it down any more than it absolutely has to be.  Diageo is a spirits company, the world’s biggest, and it doesn’t really get beer.  They have some interesting brands in their wardrobe and it would be nice to see them do something with them. But the ‘Diageo Way of Branding’ – or ‘Dweeb’ as its known internally – is a hideously slow and inflexible checklist process that stifles innovation before it’s born.  It makes sense if you’re trying to keep emerging markets in line so they don’t screw up a brand like Smirnoff or Johnny Walker.  It stands in the way as a roadblock to the successful expansion of, say, Tusker lager from Kenya.
So: purely my (informed) opinion, but ‘the multinationals’ are not interchangeable, not all as bad as each other.  I think each has something, however small, that deserves praise.  On the whole, I find there are pockets of passion for beer.  But when you’re managing brands this big, you can also see how smaller, nimbler competition will run rings around them.  And you can hopefully see why, when one of them gets it really, disastrously wrong, consistently wrong, its necessary to call them out on it – because they could instead still be doing something interesting.

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