Beers for the girls

Beer is the most popular alcoholic drink in the world. In the UK only 12 per cent of beer sales are made to women. And there are just under 24.8 million women over the age of 18 living in the UK. Can anyone else spot a potentially massive and seemingly blindingly obvious potential market here? Yes, me too. So why doesn't the UK market have a beer brewed for and marketed directly at women?

It's a question that has been niggling me for the past month or so, ever since I attended a ladies' beer tasting evening hosted by SABMiller. At the event guests were served a range of the brewer's beers in pretty glasses and told that this was because research had shown women find pints intimidating.

And it was explained to us that many beers didn't appeal to women because female taste buds were more sensitive to its bitter taste. Of course, years of man-centric beer ads featuring lads on nights out or women in branded skimpy bikinis can't have helped either.

But then we were shown a presentation on how, with the right female-focused marketing, SABMiller's women's beer brand Redd's had become very successful in Russia (see box, below). It has a sweeter taste than most beers and has been intensively marketed with easy-to-hold feminine bottles and packaging, stylish adverts and advertorials in leading women's glossies and sponsorship of major fashion events. Thirty thousand hectolitres were sold in Russia last year. This year that number is expected to rise to 95,200.

Would it work here?​

To me and the other female journalists in the room it seemed like something UK women would go for. So why hasn't it been launched here? No-one seems prepared or able to say.

Helen Pyman, global marketing development director for SABMiller, said that creating a women's beer for the UK market was "on the radar". But a spokeswoman from Miller Brands, the UK subsidiary, said: "While we are always monitoring developments in the UK marketplace, there are no immediate plans to specifically target women with existing or new brands." No-one else, including managing director Nick Miller, was prepared to say anything further.

Such reluctance to talk seems strange when the brewer seemingly has heavily invested in finding out how to make beer appeal to women. But, according to consumer psychologist Paul Buckley, products like Redd's are unlikely to be successful in the UK.

"The Redd's ads are selling an image of sophistication. That wouldn't work in Britain, there isn't a mass market for it," says Buckley. "In the UK you don't target people, you target a state of mind, such as the drink being part of a good night out."

Buckley says that the creation of a female-only beer isn't necessary as women are likely to respond well to something that just isn't so, well, male - and herein lies the problem.

"Any new brand would need to position itself somewhere in between the way spirits and ciders do. It would need to be more of an associated product, so something that groups of friends would use, part of being part of the group basically," he says. "Beer needs a new image built around it in order to appeal to women and advertising campaigns on that scale can be massively expensive."

Project Eve​

But that potential cost hasn't put off Coors Brewers. The brewer of Carling and Grolsch has amassed a crack team of female employees under the codename Project Eve. Their mission? To discover how they can make beer appeal to women. This feature will self destruct in 10 seconds. Only kidding.

Nicola Young, project manager for Project Eve, says: "There is a commercial prize. Women currently consume very little beer so the development of products that appeal to them is a huge opportunity that as yet has been unexplored.

"But I'm afraid that we can't get away from the fact that a lot of women just don't like beer. And as brewers we have spent years developing and marketing products to men so really it shouldn't be a major surprise that women have chosen to look to other categories."

Over the coming months the Project Eve team will be looking at whether a number of measures such as introducing smaller more feminine-shaped glasses, sweeter tasting beers, providing details on beers' provenance, and working to establish the image of beer as being a premium product that women see as a treat would help. Once all this research has been conducted the company will set about creating a new product. "Whether we create a neutral beer or one that is female only, it's too early to say right now," says Young.

Whatever the outcome of Project Eve, it's exciting that the beer industry has recognised how old-fashioned it has been in the masculine way it markets its products and that a beer for females seems to be on the horizon.

But I very much doubt that Coors is the only one chasing the prize. Rather than it being a race to see who can get a product out there first, I suspect it is actually a race to discover who can change women's perceptions first. And that could prove very expensive.