As a member of the Fullers' Real Ale Club I did get the email telling me all about their new TV campaign but it was only last night I actually saw one of the adverts. I'll be honest as well as being a beer drinker, I read a lot and listen to music rather than watch TV. In my opinion there is barely anything on TV worth the license fee and I'm not yet old enough to be a grumpy old sod or whatever the female equal is.
As adverts go, it wasn't loud, annoying or irritating but it showed the product and was mildly amusing. So I was impressed and it got me thinking that part of the reason why beer has a old bloke's image is that fact that there are very few breweries who advertise in popular media forms. When I look at Beer in the Evening website, no adverts for beer pop up, instead the pop ups are all for either travel or laser eye surgery. Hardly the type of advertising one is interested in when looking for a pub to go to that weekend or evening is it?
Papers do have beer adverts on the odd occasion but magazines don't. Small hint if you want women to look at beer, how about a good quality advert campaign in magazines? The wine industry do it after all, Cosmo and similar have full page wine adverts.
I know partly the lack of advertising is down to money, campaigns do cost a lot. But advertising in my experience is like a ball, takes effort to start it rolling but once it's going the costs do become cheaper so the product is better known.
And yes before someone comments, I do happen to like James May.
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Apart from lager adverts, the only ones on TV I can think of are Peter Kay's adverts for John Smiths, which I find iritating. It's laddish and does nothing to entice women drinkers - not that you'd want to encourage them to drink John Smiths.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, when beer is advertised, it's usually aimed at men, often in a juvenile way, which is foolish seeing that the number of women drinking ale is increasing all the time. Beer advertisers seem locked in a 1970s timewarp.
Certainly some are but I think the brewer industry is getting better. Thornbridge, Darkstar and Fullers are good examples of beer advertising getting much much better.
ReplyDeleteI would have said McMullen but after the recent adverts in their pubs unfortunately come across as childish laddy stuff. Shame as they used to be quite good.
I think lots of smaller breweries are selling about as much beer as they can make without having to spend on advertising (which is great!). I'm thinking of Thornbridge, for example, which has managed to expand massively without (as far as I can tell) doing much more than making cracking beer and getting it out there.
ReplyDeleteWell they do have a good web presence, twitter and blogwise. However their pump clips are appealing on the bar... all have a collective similarness and they are modern.
ReplyDeleteDarkstar have Warhol influenced t-shirts which I see every so often which always make me think about a pint.