Battle of the South West: St Austell Vs Sharp's

Coming from a coastal region rich in maritime history, it is fitting to see Cornish rivals St Austell and Sharp's as warring naval fleets.

The major battleground is over establishing a national brand. Indeed, continuing the seafaring metaphor, nowhere could the drinks industry term 'flagship' be more appropriate.

In each case, the old money of long-established family brewer St Austell and the young upstart aggressive businessmen of Sharp's, the companies have a major brand that represents the bulk of their production and which they hope can become major vessels in ports around the country.

St Austell's Tribute and Sharp's Doom Bar are their major hopes for winning the Battle of the South West. They are both products marketed as having strong Cornish provenance, and which are gaining distribution well outside of their heartlands. Tribute featured just outside of the top 100 brands in The Publican Brands Report 2008, and Doom Bar has this in its sights too.

For a long time, St Austell was unchallenged as the dominant brewing force in the South West. Sharp's opened for business in 1994, and Joe Keohane and Nick Baker took over as directors in 2003. With a background in frozen ready-meals, the pair set about re-inventing Sharp's as a modern business to be reckoned with.

There are now 14 brewers in Cornwall, and St Austell says it has welcomed the proliferation as an inspiration to raise its game.

So, how is each faring?

St Austell

It was 2001 when St Austell renamed surprisingly popular seasonal ale Daylight Robbery as Tribute, and decided to make it a permanent run.

But it was by no means a foregone conclusion that it would be chosen when a rebranding exercise at the brewery in the same year involved choosing one beer from St Austell's portfolio to push into the national sales force. There were calls for it to be HSD - but, as head brewer Roger Ryman recalls, "the timing was right" for Tribute.

"We had a hole in our range for a 4.2 per cent product. It was more of a contemporary style, lighter in colour, sweeter and less bitter, but with big hop character," Ryman explains. All this at a time when golden beers like Deuchars IPA were clearing up at beer awards and riding the crest of a fashion wave. Sales were strong and "since then, we have backed a winner," says Ryman.

This has involved becoming more focused in marketing on the brand, rather than on St Austell as a company. Production of Tribute stepped up to a level where it now represents around 75 per cent of production, and a seasonal ale programme has been "rationalised" - something which one senses in conversation Ryman is not entirely happily with.

For better or worse, this focus on a flagship brand has seen Tribute benefit from the full force of a £500,000 annual marketing spend by St Austell recently. Of that, £200,000 has been spent on the 'You've earned it' series of Tribute ads based around rugby. St Austell, perhaps more so than Sharp's, sees the local area as the launchpad for a main brand to pick up distribution nationally - Cornwall first, then England is the mantra.

A consumer survey conducted by Delphi for St Austell looked into perceptions of Tribute and its advertising in the South West (see box, below). There are no plans for an equivalent on a national scale.

Nevertheless, it's clear that national distribution is important to Tribute. Ryman estimates a third of its volume is sold through St Austell's tied estate in the South West, a third through the freetrade there, and the rest through national sales.He summarises: "The focus has got to be on local first. You have to command your own patch. Our stated ambition is to be the number one in the South West, then the number one from the South West."

Brand awareness in the South West​

Delphi Research conducted interviews of 420 cask ale drinkers in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, and asked them which ale brands they were aware of, and which ale brand advertising they could recall.

When the names of beers were suggested to them, 73 per cent said they had heard of Tribute, and 48 per cent Doom Bar.

When unprompted, 38 per cent said they had heard of Tribute, and six per cent Doom Bar.

Twenty-one per cent agreed that they had seen Tribute advertised, while two per cent agreed that they had seen Doom Bar advertised.

Sharp's

"We were attracted to Sharp's precisely because it had a great brand in Doom Bar," says director Joe Keohane. "We saw cask as an industry that had a lot of potential, though the big family brewers had become set in their ways.

"Nobody at the time was really pushing cask to a younger market or giving it a more modern image."

The volume produced by Sharp's annually has increased four-fold since Keohane took over to around 45,000 brewers' barrels annually, and a new brew house in July will potentially allow it to be tripled again, which will mean the possibility for volumes comparable to those of Adnams rolling out of Sharp's gates. Around 70 per cent of the current production is Doom Bar.

Sharp's does not have a pub estate, seeing "no logical relationship between brewing and running pubs". Without that guaranteed route to market, it has come up with a range of schemes for the distribution of Doom Bar.

While Sharp's beers are distributed by Carlsberg, Keohane says he "doesn't believe big wholesalers' rotational policies help brand loyalty".

A Sharp's depot opened in Bristol in 2004, supplying down to North Devon and up to Birmingham, and a depot serving London followed soon after. The beer is delivered from these depots by a fleet of Sharp's branded vehicles driven by staff trained by Sharp's to be able to offer advice on beer quality to licensees.

"I firmly believe that having a Sharp's driver delivering beer in a Sharp's branded vehicle, and able to provide advice, that level of contact compared to a wholesaler is so much better," says Keohane.

Sharp's also has a deal with Essex-based wholesaler Laurence Phillipe, based on the condition that at least 80 per cent of its sales are of Sharp's products.

Keohane describes this as "almost an extension of the business, with our branding on their vehicles," and says he is in negotiations for similar arrangements with Andrews of Margate and another wholesaler in the North of England.

With the directors not coming from traditional brewing backgrounds, you sense that Sharp's is a brewer not afraid to diversify from the traditional pub model. It has picked up listings in bar-restaurants such as London's Canteen chain.

Keohane says: "There will be steady decline in what we think of today as the traditional pub.

"We have actively tried to cultivate outlets that are not your old-fashioned landlord and swing sign."

Marketing is more limited than in St Austell's case, but includes a sponsorship of the Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge in March.