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You can't escape from Estrella Damm in Barcelona. The beer is everywhere. In fact, with Damm's brand new brewery just outside the airport gates, a...

You can't escape from Estrella Damm in Barcelona. The beer is everywhere. In fact, with Damm's brand new brewery just outside the airport gates, a giant bottle of the golden 4.6 per cent ABV beer is literally the first thing you see when you arrive.

So when, back in March 2007, Damm appointed Anheuser-Busch to bring the beer over to the UK, one could have been forgiven for thinking that the beer would make its presence felt.

Eighteen months on, The Publican caught up with James Whiteley, portfolio brand manager at Anheuser-Busch, at Damm's brewery in Barcelona to find out why the brand's UK launch had been, so, well, subtle.

Estrella Damm hasn't become as high profile in the UK as other Spanish beers such as San Miguel. How are you building the brand?

I would say Estrella Damm is hugely successful in the UK. For us, it does prove there's a foundation for other what we call Sunshine Beers to develop here.

We don't want to flog it to death and reduce what we see as its huge potential to be the premium, genuine Spanish beer in the UK. We have to build volume but we have to do it the right way and deliver the right image, rather than just throw everything out there.

Month by month, we're seeing new listings in both the on and off-trade, including high-profile ones from pub groups such as Punch Taverns and Enterprise. We also have a very positive relationship with the likes of Marston's and Mitchells & Butler.

It's a case of taking baby steps but the growth has surpassed my expectations at this moment in time.

What are your goals for growing UK distribution?

Our aim would be to quadruple the brand in the next year or two in terms of scale.

Our distribution has increased by 100 per cent in the last year, and our volume by 137 per cent, so I think that is certainly very feasible.

But that shouldn't fly in the face of growing something steadily. It's a balancing act. We have to stay premium. Consumers are asking for that. Also the connotations of it being a holiday drink work well for us.

We want to continue to present the brand that way to the UK consumer, so you will see that as part of our future marketing.

Distribution in the UK started off in supermarkets, restaurants, hotels and bars. How are you cracking pubs?

We see the on-trade as the place to establish brands in the UK.

I think we are lucky to be at a time when the pub trade is really upping the ante on what it delivers. We want to find ways to support our brand within pubs and bars in the UK. We need to continue to educate the trade as we grow the brand. That's our challenge.

How do you plan to support the trade then?

We will always seek to bring the trade to Barcelona to experience the sponsorships of sports and music festivals and the city, which is the essence of the brand. We do run such incentives and we will continue to do that.

There is no point getting a brand in and then leaving somebody to develop it on their own.

Where we can provide the support to push the brand and help them promote it to their customers, we will do that. We also have brand ambassadors from Barcelona working in the UK.

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