Bottled Beer: Bottles blaze a trail for Cobra
When The Publican last spoke to Cobra, conquering draught was very much in the beer company's sights. "It is very important when you consider that bottled lager is in long-term decline in the on-trade - a trend that is unlikely to be reversed in the near future," Zoe Smith, on-trade marketing manager for Cobra, told us back in June.
Fast-forward a few months and her view seems to have changed. "The bottle is iconic. A lot of our advertising features the bottle. It's important that we continue to communicate about the bottle," she now says.
To be fair to Cobra, at a time when marketing budgets are being slashed across the industry, the drinks brand is putting a lot of money into promoting its beer in pubs, especially bottled.
A sizeable chunk of its £14m budget for this year has been spent on the Cobra sampling campaign, which saw five replica AC Cobra classic sports cars, emblazoned with the Cobra logo, visit major UK cities to give away 300,000 bottles.
And this approach seems to be paying off massively. In the past year, the total volume of lager sold has dropped by 8.4 per cent, whereas overall sales of Cobra beer have risen by 12.4 per cent, according to the latest Nielsen statistics.
"Bottled beer is still really important. Bottles play a really important role from a tactical point of view," says Zoe. "The format allows you to experiment a little more as it's easier for people to try something more unusual if it's bottled. That's why world lager is doing really well."
Bottles are indeed tactical for the brand, as it continues its push to establish itself firmly as a pub beer, not just one for curry houses.
Bottles, of course, are an easier way to enter a market. At the beginning of the year Cobra set itself the target of getting the beer into 20,000 outlets. So far, it has reached 6,000, predominately through bottles.
In recent months, Cobra has rebranded its bottles with a logo designed to suit a "stylish pub environment" and give the brand greater prominence in the fridge, and it has also extended its bottled range. As well as five per cent ABV Cobra Premium, Cobra Light, Cobra Zero and King Cobra, there is also Cobra Bite - a bottle-only range of fruit-flavoured beers, made by adding fruit extracts after brewing and available in Lemongrass, Blood Orange and Sweet Lime variants. A new flavour is set to be launched in the next few months.
Although these have enjoyed a higher profile in the off-trade, they are also available to the on-trade through WaverleyTBS, and show that Cobra, not content with flying the flag for premium world beers, is looking to broaden its appeal to females.
"It is more skewed towards women and that is an area that is of interest to us," Zoe says. "Once we have established ourselves across more accounts, we will really look to push that. Cobra five per cent is our core product. We will continue to focus on that and when we have that relationship with a pub, we will look to see if it is appropriate to bring other products in."
So, although the focus remains on bottled beer for now, Zoe says that the long-term goal will be on pushing draught. A redesign of the font is due at the end of the year.
Zoe says: "There is a lot of focus on draught. It's incredibly important to us. Ultimately we will have a font, glass and bottle that will be aligned with each other."
