How serious are they?

Last week I posted about the new campaign from Cricket Australia, supported by Fosters, Diageo and Channel 9, called ‘Know when to declare”. While supporting the campaign, I did highlight some of the challenges that a company that profits from selling alcohol faces in being taken seriously selling the healthy drinking message. Last Sunday night on the Beer Show we had Troy Hey, Fosters General Manager-Media and Reputation, on to talk about the campaign. Troy spoke about the campaign and its aims and made good points about the role a business like Foster’s has to play in changing societal perceptions about alcohol. It’s obviously an issue that, at least on some level, the business is serious about.

Then today, I’m strolling through the local bottlo and see the latest promotion for Carlton Mid, Ken’s Bucks. With the tagline, “We made up a man so you can go to his Bucks”.

Google “Ken’s Bucks” and the first return is:'

Now, what is the first thing that you think of when you think of a buck’s party? (Ok, maybe the second..after boobs and before the shaved eyebrows and one-way train tickets). But it’s certainly not moderation or responsible drinking.

To quote comedian Robin Williams out of context, sticking the ‘enjoy responsibly’ logo on a promotion that ties beer with a buck’s night is like trying to stop a Ferrari with a tissue.

A couple of weeks ago, Foster’s national sponsorship manager, Chris Maxwell, admitted the company was wrong to feature David Boon as part of their talking doll campaign because it could be seen promoting binge drinking.

The issue with Boonie is a hard one. He is a great Australian, and he has personally never sought to promote or glamorise his inflight ‘achievement’. As a recent article about it recounted:

When asked a few years ago to discuss it, his blunt reply was: "Never have, never will." When he penned his life story soon after his retirement he didn't even mention it.

But, fairly or not, he will forever be associated with the 52 cans on a flight to London and associating him with a beer campaign is a nudge and a wink in that direction.

In admitting the error, Chris Maxwell said:

"Looking back, we have decided that was the wrong thing to do. We didn't have the foresight to see that this issue was going to be so significant. And in glorifying that behaviour we have added to the issue of the normalisation of binge-drinking in Australia.

''The difference is now we realise we have a responsibility to the community to promote our products in a responsible way. Therefore, we think a lot more deeply about how we use ambassadors, how we use our messages, and the potential impact down the track."

When I put this to Troy, he replied:

The promotion is for midstrength beer, aimed at spending time with your mates with the prize a 5 star accommodation, meal, nightclub entry and grand canyon helicopter and white water rafting adventure.

There’s nothing in the promotion that encourages abuse of alcohol and instead, it plays to the modern incarnation of the bucks party - as the ultimate leave pass for the bloke who finds it tough to get time away to do ‘stuff’ i.e. golf, go-cart racing, fishing, fly to LA and white water raft etc.)

All reasonable, except the competition isn’t called “The Ultimate Leave Pass” competition.

The “Know when to declare” message is a positive one, but it seems to be inconsistent with and undermined by the very same brewery tying a campaign to buck's parties.

What's the first thing you think about when you think buck's nights?

No Heineken, no sense of humour

It's probably because they "develop their portfolio of brands" rather than "brew beer" that makes the multinational malt-derived alcohol companies such a humourless bunch, but this is pretty heavy-handed and petty even by their standards.

Heineken cracks down on tiny Swiss "Keineken"

(AP) – 10 hours ago

AMSTERDAM — Swiss police have seized 1,000 bottles of locally made "Keineken" beer after the Dutch beer giant Heineken NV complained its brand was being infringed.

The name "Keineken" appears to be a pun in German meaning "No Heineken."

Heineken spokesman Jeroen Breuer said Tuesday a judge in the Swiss canton of Obwalden ordered police to seize the brew after agreeing Keineken infringed the Heineken brand.

Breuer said Heineken doesn't consider the size of its opponents when its brand is being misused.

"Whether the name is a joke or a way of getting publicity — those are questions for them to answer," he said.

A note on Keineken's Web site complains that foreign companies have "swallowed" all Switzerland's independent brewers.

"Our name says it all: Keineken."

While I'm at it with Heineken, what is it with this ad:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-NfrBgYIEQ]

Apart from creeping me out, I'm not quite sure what it says about their beer...or about women. I'm gratified to see that I'm not alone.

At least Fosters do make truly great ads.

And before I finish with Heineken, these are an interesting read too...

Ads without people?

Fosters hasn’t quite stopped making beer, but they obviously want to focus on what they do best. They have just appointed Sydney-based ad agency Droga5, creators of The Regulars and the controversial, cynical and extremely successful Raise A Glass campaign, to handle advertising for Crown Lager and Cascade in addition to VB. Expect to watch more advertising brilliance in the future…while you drink something else.

Fortunately, they don't advertise in Russia which prohibits the use of people in beer ads.

In 2004, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service prohibited the use of human or animal images in beer commercials and limited the time that beer advertising can be shown on television to between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

In May, however, the regulator complained that the beer industry was circumventing the law by using images implying the presence of people without showing the people themselves — such as clinking beer glasses and off-screen voices conversing.

Now obviously advertisers use people in ads for a reason. They want to establish a brand identity that their target market will indentif ywith, and will hopefully prompt beer drinkers to think they will look as cool, wealthy or as discerning as the pretty and handsome young things in the ad and hopefully encourge them to buy that brand of beer to cloak themselves in those brand attributes. While this in all probability does have a flow on effect to make drinking seem cool as well, I'm not quite sure that that's the biggest problem that alcohol faces. It's just one of the easiest for government's to tackle and to be seen doing something to pander to the ever louder voices of prohibition. You will still have endless images of footballers celebrating with beer (and the scandalous stories of how the night ended up in the papers for weeks to come), champagne corks popping at Formula One trophy presentations, cocktail parties in the social pages and so on and so on.

Drinking and any problems surrounding it is a huge issue and Government's just tend to distort the problem with half-arsed bans like this one.

I enjoyed the quote from Konstantin Garanin, creative director of the unusually  named Reclamafia advertising agency.

“If we’re banned from using people’s voices and other human-related stuff, we’ll just show more beautiful landscapes and flowing water,” he said.

They gotta pay for the ads somehow...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIdDLWNtfHA] The play it well Fosters. Their new beer ad was a huge hit (and deservedly so…though I am reminded of this story from The Onion and think that maybe Fosters should quit the beer market to concentrate on ads).

But in all the fuss about the ad for the beer, they managed to squeeze out a media release announcing they have again reduced the alcohol content in VB…

VB Remains Great Value

Melbourne, 01 July 2009

VB remains great value, retaining its wholesale price unchanged on stubbies and cans despite Federal Government excise increases and rising input costs.

With bi-annual CPI-indexed excise increases applying from 1 August and in the face of rising input costs including malt and hops,  VB will hold its wholesale price in stubbies and cans, through tough economic times. VB will reduce alcohol-by-volume from 4.8 to 4.6% from August to fund this.

"With a microscopic change in alcohol content, VB will come in line with most Australian mainstream beers", said VB Group Marketing Manager, Paul Donaldson. "The beer tastes exactly the same, has the same standard drinks, and offers better value to stockists."

"We're investing behind the brand with one of Australia's biggest ever beer ads - VB Regulars - launching next week", Paul said.  "VB is Australia's favourite beer and we're making sure it remains the real Australian beer.

Talk about making it a positive: despite the Government, the cost of ingredients and economic conditions - not to mention the cost of the huge ad we're unveiling next week...

This is becoming an annual event, following on from the move in July 2007 when Fosters cut the alcohol-by-volume from 4.9% to 4.8%, and a similar move by Castlemaine Perkins in July last year to reduce XXXX Bitter to reduce their ABV to 4.6%.

While this has generated considerable media coverage and all sorts of mainstream debate about whether the flavour will change don’t expect too much different. Even when the alcohol was around the 4.9% ABV, the flavour profiles were trending light. It reminds me of an article by Rory Gibson in 2006 when Castlemaine Perkins launched the short-lived Special Brew…

Brent Wright, XXXX's head brewer and the creator of Special Brew, says the beer was designed to attract those that inhabit “the night-time zone”.

“We've done a lot of research which identified a niche market for XXXX, aimed at the younger crowd who are essentially impervious to mainstream advertising,” Wright says, which explains why Special Brew had such a low-key launch at the end of November.

“These people go out to a bar and they tend to drink something with more taste to it, like wine, spirits or the RTD (ready to drink) cans.

“They don't want to have too many -- they might have five or six drinks a night -- but they want to taste them.

“XXXX Gold is a beer you can drink a lot of but it has no taste memory. Special Brew is a step-up in flavour.''

Although it still uses the Golden Cluster hops and special yeast that its older brothers are made with, the Special Brew clocks in at 6.5 per cent alcohol, is a darker colour and carries more bitterness and fullness.

Although comparisons are odious to brewers who put a lot of effort into creating what they have every right in thinking is a unique beer, Brent names James Squire's Golden Ale as a drink that shares similar characteristics.

“I can still remember the original XXXX, which had a lot more bitterness and bite than the beer we have today. Special Brew reminds me of that,'' Wright says.

“It is a challenging beer, hoppy and malty, and we are proud of it.''

If it doesn't make an impression on the market, it may disappear into the "good idea but no one wanted it'' bin.

When asked if it was a permanent fixture on the XXXX menu or just a fishing exercise by the marketing department, Wright wouldn't say.

“If it shows stickability Special Brew is here to stay,'' he says. Given Wright spent a year perfecting it he has his fingers crossed that all his 20-year-old son's mates get a taste for it.

There is so much going on in this article that I want to comment on (which is why it immediately leapt to mind) but the phrase “no taste memory” just screams “tasteless” and the sentence “I can still remember the original XXXX, which had a lot more bitterness and bite than the beer we have today'' . Just says it all. Obviously stickability wasn't one of its attributes as it sank pretty quickly.

These mainstream beers are going the way of water anyway as brewers frantically try and chase a generation raised on sweet, fizzy drinks for whom bitterness holds no attraction. It’s not about quality (at least in terms of being ‘good’ as opposed to ‘consistent’), it’s about marketshare. And they are businesses afterall. They will be here in some form of multinational megacorp long after many of the great little craft breweries springing up today have folded because their reasons for being are so different. These breweries have been around for so long because their "portfolio of brands" is just the means to make a return for shareholders. They don’t really care what those fast moving consumer goods are so long as they are moving.

The mindset is just confirmed when you see someone with Chuck Hahn’s standing in the beer community, someone who I greatly respect, saying things like:

"What we do to lighten the beer up is use three to 30 percent cane sugar to make the beer thinner and more thirst quenching," he told ninemsn.

"It's more refreshing on a hot day than German beers — it's brewed for our climate."

"Nothing's more natural than cane sugar," he said.

"There is no sugar left in the beer, it is fermented out by the yeast."

But while Ms Pavoni pointed out that German beer contains less calories than full cream milk or grape juice, Mr Hahn said it was harder to drink Bavarian beers in large amounts because they are richer in flavour.

"With richer tasting beer you don’t drink as much," he said.

With up to 30% cane sugar being used in mainstream beers dropping the ABV back .2% just means a little less of the cane sugar, which is just there for alcohol because it adds nothing to the body or flavour anyway. It is what gives these beers their “sessionability”. No one will notice the difference, except maybe the sugar cane farmers. Which, returning to VB, makes it interesting that nowhere in the discussion about input prices is sugar mentioned, although they have increased over the past 12 months.

As for the phrases “They don't want to have too many -- they might have five or six drinks a night” and  "With richer tasting beer you don’t drink as much," I’ll leave them to the anti-alcohol campaigners to comment on. It’s a separate issue, but if you want to know who painted the huge target on the beer industry for the neo-prohibitionists to aim for, you don’t need to look much further.