Bombardier: Rik Mayall provides huge boost for category

Red tunic-clad soldiers take a break from fighting a battle in the Napoleonic wars in the 1800s and sit around singing while smoke rises from their campfire, which is situated dangerously close to a barrel of gunpowder.

But nobody is concerned as the barrel is a prop, the field is in a farm in Hertfordshire, and the soldiers are part of a battle re-enactment group. This is 2011 and they are lounging around waiting to film the next scene of a big-budget advertisement for Wells & Young's cask-ale brand Bombardier.

The big artillery in the ads is Rik Mayall playing a bombardier in a style very reminiscent of his Lord Flashheart character in the Blackadder series. The difference being that his catchphrase of "Woof!" has been replaced with "Bang on!" and "Huzzah!"

Wells & Young's certainly hope the advertising campaign is bang on target as it is committing a serious chunk of its marketing budget to the Bombardier brand. But for its £4m the Bedford-based brewer is hoping to not only boost sales of Bombardier but also rejuvenate the whole ale category in the UK.

Chris Lewis, marketing director at Wells & Young's, says: "This is a change for the cask-ale category. We want to blow the bloody doors off as there is a challenge to overcome and this £4m spend in 2011 is the highest ever for us and for cask ale this year, and possibly ever."

While sat in a double-decker bus whose interior has been converted into a dining room (à la Ricky Gervais's Extras comedy series) for feeding the 40-strong film crew and 25 actors, Lewis outlines how the company wants to break out of simply advertising Bombardier as an English cask ale.

"Most cask ales are in fact English so how do you get more cut-through [to consumers]? We wanted to avoid the obvious ads that show the cask-ale drinker as a not dynamic 35 to 55-year-old. We realised our greatest asset is the name Bombardier, which perfectly defines the brand's character," he explains.

Entertaining rogue​

By taking the rank of a corporal in the artillery who aims the cannon at the enemy Lewis says personality has been given to the name. Working with its new advertising agency, Karmarama, Wells & Young's then expanded on this to define the character as having humour, caddishness, charm, and English swagger.

"We wanted the character to be a lovable, hugely entertaining rogue and there was only one person who could play that — Rik Mayall. As Flashheart he was a leader of people, and people love him," says Lewis.

And Mayall was equally keen to take up the challenge and don his bombardier's breeches and impressive fake moustache. "It's really great material. You just want to do it... and I do like the beer," he says during a break on the set.

The fact that many people in their 20s will not remember Flashheart and Blackadder is of little concern to Lewis who admits the ads will not appeal to younger lager drinkers: "It's the 30, 40, and 50-year-olds who'll get the humour. Our core target audience is upmarket 35 to 55-year-olds who have mature taste buds and have got into ale at some point. We are not talking about people in their 20s who want the latest comedy character."

Over the course of the two full days of filming — during which time enforced and frequent breaks were taken as planes annoyingly flew overhead from nearby Stansted airport — Mayall had plenty of opportunity to expertly deliver the riposte of "Just like me" to the campaign's strap-line of "It's English, ever-reliable and damned tasty" that will feature heavily throughout the campaign.

The intensity of his performance during filming is, according to Lewis, down to the fact that "his comedy integrity is riding on it". But it might also be down to Mayall's acknowledgment that the "production quality is just great for an ad, and the director of photography is the best there is".

This must be great consolation to Wells & Young's as Lewis reveals that the £4m budget is more than the company's annual net profit. But the expectations for the campaign are extremely high.

Double volumes​

Lewis says the aim is to double volumes over the next two years, which will be achieved by a combination of drinkers turning to the beer when they see it in their local pub and asking specifically for it when they don't see it. He hopes this will prompt more pubs to stock the beer. "It's a call to action, to plead with publicans to stock us," he adds.

Again the aim here is for a doubling of the number of pubs offering the ale on hand-pump: "A big part of the campaign is to get new [pub] customers. Four thousand pubs stock it at the moment and a doubling is an almost basic threshold. We're so ballsy about this campaign that we think this is a soft target."

The company's decision to take up arms and fight a campaign is driven by a desire to grow its own brands — having recently lost the deal to brew and distribute Corona in the UK and a reduced distribution deal with Red Stripe. "It was a shock to lose them and we now see the need to grow our core brands — and the flagship is Bombardier," he says.

The threat of market share being lost to the growing army of microbreweries has also not been lost on Wells & Young's management. "We're taking the high ground to get pubs to stock big [cask-ale] brands. It's about supporting the trade.

The lager brands are well known so we're looking for the same with Bombardier. Consumers want to see nationally recognised brands and there is room for them alongside local beers," suggests Lewis.

To achieve the company's big aims the campaign is expected to cover a hefty 80% of the target audience of ABC1 men during the first TV burst from 17 May to the end of June (when the TV advertising spots will cost a total of £1.8m).

The target audience will see the ad six times on average, which gives it similar characteristics to the big fast-moving consumer goods campaigns from the likes of Kraft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Another burst of TV ads will then follow in October.

Integrated aspect​

Although the TV ads account for 75% of the campaign's overall spend, the 'integrated' aspect, which encompasses print, digital and social media, is also vitally important. In fact, the ad was first aired on 12 May on the internet and was achieving 60,000 hits per week on Youtube in mid May, according to Wells & Young's.

Fans of Bombardier can befriend it on Facebook and follow it on Twitter, and Lewis hopes "people will hook into this". He adds: "Digital is part of the market for consumers and we want to get interaction and engagement. The meerkat adverts are a good example of this — and that character lives on."

But the Bombardier character is reliant to some extent on the continued presence of Rik Mayall and although Lewis says "he'll do it as long as he wants to" there is clearly the potential that a vacancy will appear in the future should he hang up his boots and breeches.

This scenario has clearly been considered by the brewer and Nigel McNally, managing director of Wells & Young's, hints: "It's all about the Bombardier character and we'll probably have other people for the Bombardier in the future." Huzzah!