Marketing & Promotions: Making the activity fit the pub

For responsible publicans, even in the current challenging conditions, the emphasis for promotions has to be on driving not volume but value.

Promotions have to focus on guiding customers towards higher margin drinks we would prefer them to enjoy and cross-selling food where appropriate. This means promotional communications must emphasise serve, need-state (such as refreshment or indulgence) and occasion.Fighting through the clutter

There is a lot of visual 'clutter' in your average pub - glassware, blackboards, menus, signage and so on. Pubs aren't exactly famous for their minimalist approach to interior décor either. Any promotional material has to work hard to stand out, so I'm not surprised that publicans rated promotions highly on how visually striking they were.

One size does not fit all

Pubs vary by size, customer, wet/dry mix and core occasion, so brands sending out a single promotional 'kit' are bound to miss the mark a lot of the time, with the research revealing that 64 per cent of those who chose not to run a promotion were doing so because it was unsuitable for their outlet.

In today's environmentally-conscious times it's especially important that promotional material doesn't go straight in the bin. The more switched-on brands are tailoring their promotional material to the size of outlet and occasion or even encouraging licensees to order online a bespoke kit to suit their particular needs. Posters or wallpaper?

It's interesting that posters were rated highly as functional point-of-sale (PoS) material. Research I conducted with pub and bar customers suggested that posters were increasingly seen by them as wallpaper - as one regular put it: "I see the posters, I just don't see what's on them."

I have a particular bugbear about the branded 'empty belly' price promotions posters - as well as being ineffective they can look very tacky. But I'm pleased to see that blackboards are appreciated for their effective role in promotions - customers see them as a trusted source of information.The double-hit

The ideal promotional kit should address both 'first drink' and 'second drink' opportunities. When the customer first approaches the bar you need lots of prominent PoS and functional branded reminders on and around the back-bar - ice buckets, blackboards, staff T-shirts - to try and have an impact on what is a relatively quick decision-making process.

Then, by the time customers get to their second drink, PoS around the table or bar area such as table-talkers come into play as a more considered decision-making process allows more complex promotions and drinks outside the customer's normal repertoire to be given consideration.Permanent reminders

Brands seem to be starting to move away from quick-fix promotions towards more permanent PoS solutions that command the back-bar - such as small branded bar-top chillers. Red Bull is a past master at this and Jägermeister has got in on the act with its Tap Machine. It's a great way of guaranteeing a permanent brand presence at the point of purchase.Getting results

The fact that less than a third of publicans thought brand owners evaluated promotions well illustrated how difficult it can be for brands to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of activity, and it's time-consuming for publicans to track and report back on sales unless they have modern EPoS systems.

Old-school evaluation techniques like sending in bottle-tops are open to abuse and contacting each outlet individually for feedback can be prohibitively expensive. On that thought, it's good to see that staff incentives fare reasonably well in the eyes of publicans. Putting incentives in place to encourage teams on the ground to effectively implement the promotion can reap massive dividends in terms of uptake and feedback. Keep it simple

In a busy pub, simplicity of promotions is key. Activity shouldn't slow down either customers' decision-making nor service at the bar. Staff shouldn't be tied up explaining promotions or hunting down plastic widgets when they should be serving and selling.

In the end, it's all about generating returns and what works well in one pub won't necessarily work in another. The research findings are an intriguing insight into what is and isn't seen by publicans to be working for them. n

Gemma Teed is a strategic planner at marketing communications agency Brahm​