Isaac Sheps: Licensees show World Cup inventiveness

These are two lines from one of my favourite poems, If by Rudyard Kipling, and they seem rather apt at the moment as England fans deal with losing to Germany in the World Cup.

But they also rather neatly sum up the immediate fate facing the pub trade. It has been billed as such a massive opportunity for pubs that England's exit before the quarter-finals is being seen by many as a disaster.

It will only be a disaster if licensees fail to work at their trading post-World Cup 2010 with the same level of skill and passion as they did before the start of the tournament.

I have been very impressed with the level of inventiveness and retail skill shown by licensees during the World Cup. At Carlsberg UK we come across examples of this all the time - our sales team has been working with some great pubs during the World Cup.

Like the George at Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, which ran a voucher scheme giving some customers access to a VIP bar area (where there was table service - with a red card/voucher for food and yellow for beer) and a quick-serve voucher lane at the bar.

Or the Mutley Crown in Plymouth, which decorated the outside and inside of the pub and bought advertising space on local buses — tying in nicely with the bus-stop advertising that Carlsberg UK has been running locally for them.

It is such skill, passion and partnership that has struck me most in the past six months and gives me great belief in the pub trade.

So while being knocked out of the World Cup is for the on-trade the kind of "disaster" that Kipling talks about in his poem, pubs need to meet that challenge in the same way it met with the "triumph" of pre-tournament excitement.

Think of all the new consumers you will have shown your pubs to in the past three weeks — think how you can bring them back. So all that fantastic effort in the build-up to the World Cup does not go to waste in the long run.

Isaac Sheps is the chief executive of Carlsberg UK​.