Every so often the drinks industry is faced with a tough problem. Who're you gonna call? The Publican's Drinks Doctor of course! He may not be in the Yellow Pages, but he's happy to give his advice to the readers of The Publican for the small fee of a Campari and soda, and a bag of nuts...
The ailment
- Background:
Cask ale is in trouble. No matter what the sector does it cannot escape the statistics: that since the mid-1990s it has been in double digit decline. The market is half the size it was just nine years ago. Several regional and family brewers, faced with the retreat of the big national cask ale brands, have decided to combat this decline by employing top notch executives and marketeers from the retail trade.
These brewers have spent a good deal of money, both themselves and through trade associations such as the British Beer & Pub Association on improving the image of beer. One way has been through advertising and marketing campaigns which have stressed the importance of beer's wholesome, home grown roots - in other words provenance, the fact that it is a local hero.
What seems to be the trouble:
Cask ale advertising and marketing is not doing the category justice. Just focusing on provenance, as many brewers are doing, is not working.
There are some inventive and well-executed campaigns by brewers, such as Adnams (Beer from the Coast) and Wychwood ("Afraid of the dark, Lagerboy?" for Hobgoblin), which are working very well. But many others are just not cutting the mustard - no matter what kind of spin PRs might put on it in their endlessly glowing press releases.
Just ringing round a few people involved in marketing at brewery level as well as licensees who sell cask ale, it is clear something is rotten in the state of cask. Words such as "dull", "poor" and "backward looking" have all been used to describe cask ale advertising. And these are people involved in and supportive of the category. Goodness knows what an outsider like Charles Saatchi would say.
We are in a perverse situation where licensees want to stock cask ale as it acts as a USP against at-home drinking and yet the figures show this sector is in almost permanent decline. Is poor advertising a reason for this and if so can anything be done to improve it?
Worthy, but dull?
Mark Dorber, licensee of the White Horse in Parson's Green, London, is blunt about the standards of advertising: "Traditional cask ale advertising has been dull as ditchwater over recent years and this has undoubtedly contributed to its decline." When you try to analyse why this has happened opinion seems to be that the category has got stuck in the past. This is a particular issue for cask beer as so much of its character is about its history - but this is rarely communicated in an exciting way.
"People buy brands because they are excited by the advertising. If it is dull and worthy it doesn't get noticed," says Rupert Thompson, chief executive of Refresh UK and the man behind the Hobgoblin "What's the matter, Lagerboy?" advertising campaign.
"A lot of beer advertising is dull and worthy and cask ale in particular is too reserved. Much of it never achieves cut-through and as a result it doesn't add value. Worthiness is a particular attribute of the ale category. If it is boring to people then it can be a bit of a waste," he adds.
Peter Jackson, marketing director of Wolverhampton & Dudley Brands (WDB), agrees. "I generally think that too much cask ale advertising is backward-looking. You want brands to talk about provenance and history but not to reiterate that constantly."
Other problems
To give marketeers a break for a minute it is fair comment to note that cask ale brewers' budgets aren't exactly at a level comparable to that of the big lager brewers.
Mike Smith, licensee of the Three Compasses in Hornsey, London, also feels the character of many family brewers holds back the quality of advertising. "In many cases all of the marketing ideas have to go through three generations of a family before they can be commissioned - so more often than not the poor marketing guy won't be able to do what he wants."
Roger Jackson, licensee of the Anglesea Arms in Halnaker, West Sussex, feels that in fact the "poor marketing guy" doesn't do much at all. "I think cask ale marketing is pretty poor on the whole. To be honest, a hell of a lot of the marketing and groundwork is done by licensees," he argues.
Mike Smith adds that the target market of ale drinkers tends to reject well-advertised brands. "Many drinkers are quite suspicious of advertising - real ale drinkers tend to like the obscure instead of the well-known. There is just an element of inverted snobbery about it."
The treatment
- Be different
Peter Jackson from WDB Brands says: "What you need as a cask ale brand is a point of difference, a USP. You have to take a risk and stand out from the crowd. We all have great heritage and use the best ingredients. Therefore what is important is what is different." Peter believes the new advertising campaign for Marston's Pedigree has achieved this by focusing on "the people who brew and deliver our beer but most particularly on the people who drink it".
A brewer that has achieved this point of difference successfully is Shepherd Neame's Spitfire. Jonathan Neame, chief executive of the Kent brewer, says: "The beauty of the campaign is its simplicity. The production costs are low with few words. It works on several different levels - it appeals to people with that 'Allo 'Allo and Dad's Army humour. But also it works another way too in the way it mocks the British obsession with the war." And not one serious allusion to provenance.
Be emotional
David Spencer, marketing director at London brewer Fuller's, believes there are two types of advertising: emotional and rational. He argues that while provenance - a rational approach - is important, you need to pursue the former to really engage customers: "We try to elicit an emotional response. People get more emotional about beer than they do with other products. Many brewers try to get a rational response; hence the move towards provenance - and there is nothing wrong with that. Budweiser does it with its King of Beers campaign. We prefer to go for the more emotional response - the best example of this being our Rugby World Cup advertising."
Think about all of the effective advertising campaigns you have seen - they all have an emotional impact. Look at SA Brain's "Positive Thinking" campaign. Granted it had a very helpful leg-up from being directly associated with the Welsh Grand Slam winning rugby team, but it was different, innovative and clever. And had nothing to do with fields of hops and barley.
Don't think I am saying that mentioning provenance should be banned. But we need to be able communicate provenance in a more vivid way - we need in the words of Mark Dorber, "to bring some fun and excitement back into the category".
It is time to get more radical
Why not really shake things up? There is nothing truly radical and different about anything out there right now.
While lager is always likely to be the drink of choice for most younger drinkers, cask ale brands make little or no attempt to be part of that landscape. It seems they would rather just focus on their target market of older consumers.
But taking risks and going for the younger mar