Brands – Beer Tinted Spectacles

Refresh and reinforce

Occasionally, professional and personal lives overlap – and this was the case when Simon at Budweiser Budvar sent me a little box containing some Budweiser Budvar goodies. He wasn’t doing this out of the kindness of his heart, although knowing Simon as a kind-hearted sort of guy this was possible, but no, Budvar have redesigned and launched their UK web shop to boot and he’s trying to drum up support, understandably.

Simon doesn’t need me to write nice things about Budvar. He’s got plenty of beer writers who are much better known waxing lyrical about the company, for good reason. Despite some pretty shaky times in Czech brewing since the late 90s, when free-market capitalism renewed its roots in the country and Czech brewers of all sizes were being gobbled up by larger brewing concerns, this state-owned brewery has remained true and consistent to brandishing the torch for the traditions of Czech lager brewing. Simple things like sticking to regional ingredients (Moravian malt, Žatec hops, local aquifer water you know versus, Thames or Severn Trent), using double decoction mashing regimes, avoiding high gravity brewing and heaven forbid, actually lagering their beer for the weeks it takes to create those subtle layers of flavour stratified with gentle, natural carbonation.

So, when a brand such as this is redesigning, my instinct is to hold my breathe and hope. The paying side of what I do is helping companies create and strengthen their brands. Oh, sure, many brewers hate the thought of brands, many beer writers too, the late Michael Jackson included. It’s not about brands, they say, brands are impersonal. It’s about the beer. It’s not consumers, it’s drinkers. Brands are what Big Beer do…sniff, sniff, snivel, snivel etc.

Which is all very well, except they’re wrong. Because brands aren’t simply a marketing ploy, they’re a shortcut that the human brain uses to make decisions easier. ‘Reducing cognitive load’ is the behavioural science name for it. And the annoying thing for the likes of our nay-saying brewers and beer writers is that (when done right) it’s proven to work.

Arguments to one side, what everyone can agree on is that how a brand shows up – it’s name, the beer itself, the design, the points of interaction – like website, draught font, glassware, bar gear and so on – are critically important to how a brand is understood, remembered and bought.

And Budvar made a bit of a mis-step last time. “B-Original” they declared in a fit of trying-to-be-clever. “B-Free” announced their non-alcoholic variant (errr – you’re a beer, not Braveheart). Strangely, “B-Dark” trumpeted their, you guessed it, dark lager and not switching off the lights or internet. It was always wrong. It looked wrong. It sounded wrong. It felt wrong. It was a classic brand trying too hard. Like someone desperately trying to be something they’re not. The label of the bottle sported a jaunty ‘swoosh’ in gold. ‘We can be like Nike’ it said, fundamentally misunderstanding the brand and its context.

With some trepidation then, I opened this little box from the Budvar web shop and silently whooped with joy. If, on the last design, some wag had told the Board that Budvar needs to appeal to Millennials by being (sorry, B-ing) fresh, young and contemporary, now Budvar is doing exactly that by reframing the task, staying true to itself and just being timeless for everyone.

Look at the design: there’s no missing the name (task 1 achieved). There’s no missing the simple descriptor (task 2 achieved). There’s no missing the premium values of this brand because they ooze off the package (tick, tick, tick): the crest of České Budejovice; the matte ink, the textured feel; the gold can top with brand-red tab. And a composition that can breathe because it isn’t cluttered and rammed-full with “benefits”. Without saying anything, everything about it says, “This is the great Budweiser Budvar…. come to me”.

Bloody hell. You may ask, ‘Who is this bloke banging on about a design and why does it matter?’

Oh, it matters. Brands are built when two things fuse together as one. The message and the memory structures – the name; the colours; the symbols that allow the brain to register and recognise it. All too often, brands throw around “re-design” like its a sign of excitement and success. No, it’s a sign of failure. I’m not saying that Budvar failed previously – that would be going too far – but if your customers struggle to recognise your package and when they do, not like it, well that’s a big problem.

And this is the beauty of the Budweiser Budvar redesign. They have taken the wonderful, memorable assets that they already own (in people’s minds) and simply refreshed them -thereby reinforcing what their brand is about. The packaging; the glassware; the web shop and the merch all unequivocally screams the brand. And if you think having a distinctive brand isn’t important in this game, good luck to you.

Lockdown Lukas

Crises drive innovation. Crises drive quick decisions.

Brewers are having to manage tragedy and opportunity as equal bedfellows. Brewers, shorn of their sales to the on trade, are having to step rapidly into the opportunity presented not just by off sales, but specifically by selling their beer and brands direct to the door of their customer…. particularly as we hear of more stories of the big supermarkets using the opportunity to negotiate hard (well, who would’ve thought it?) and squeeze those who cannot afford the squeak. Perhaps the ‘direct to customer’ model is a taste of the future. Perhaps this pandemic will be the tipping point.

Localish to me is Thornbridge – well, not quite local. There are tiny micros on my doorstep selling in poly pins and ugly flagons, but they were slow to react. Right at the start of the lockdown, I was fishing around for a brewer to support nearby and the e mail arrived from Thornbridge as I was doing it. I had the task. I needed a brand to hire. The marriage was made.

Of course they’ve been on my radar, Thornbridge. Of course I’ve had Jaipur and one or two others. Of course I rated their beers’ quality. But they remained a brewery in my soft focus. In the periphery of my mental vision, not dead centre. The lockdown, the e mail, the desire to go local, shifted them into my cross-hairs.

A mixed case chock-a-block with their core range and seasonals arrived soon after. Four of Jaipur. Four of the eminently sinkable Green Mountain, a new go-to beer. Four of their seasonal Jamestown, with ‘Hamilton‘ ringing in my ears and a suspicion it was a close relative of Jaipur (on another continent). Tall cans of the ripe grapefruit-bomb, a fruit-laden smack in the face, Halycon – too strong for supping, just right for sipping. Four of Florida Weisse which I’m still trying to work out whether it is a raspberry sour as described, or a funky twist on a Berliner Weisse.

And then Lukas. A pale, Helles-style lager beer. The most straight. Frankly, of the lot, the most… boring.

I know I’m off beam in the beer writing world in my love of lager. Yes I get excited about new ale and sour releases. God, how I enjoy a pint of a well-kept cask. Yes, I can cock-an-eyebrow at milkshake sours served with coffee ice-cream. And yes, who can’t enjoy the sheer boldness of the wavy-Hazy generation, or quintuple IPAs from Cloudwater and their progeny. But there comes a point – perhaps 3pm on Friday (or Thursday); or just after some exercise, when the only beer that will do is a lager.

A proper lager. Not this waspishly light, rice-and-enzyme brewed nonsense, where all you taste is a tingle. No, proper lager. Malty and rich; layered with subtle, perceptibly-imperceptible complexity. Lukas is one such beer. It’s worryingly light in its colour, but any Fosters-Alarm-Bell-Sounding-Here stop right there. It pours with a billowing, effusive head which needs careful control. It sports a sensible, ‘Oh, just another one‘ level of alcohol (4.2%). It leads on its grain bill, but the hops are there, providing the gilded cage within which the malts (and touch of wheat) can roam free. It laces down a clean glass in gulp-measures; it’s gone in seconds.

There’s all sorts of nonsense claims about how everything will be different post Lockdown – the non-sensical queues for McDonald’s or Ikea prove those lies, sadly. But one change we should all make permanent is to buy independent; buy direct and buy beer done properly.

Lukas

Crazy sh*t

Just occasionally, brewers have really crazy ideas. I remember once, when working in Big Beer, someone presenting this idea for beer slushies. It didn’t make the cut. Then there was the ultra-caffeinated beer that boosted your mojo. Or the one infused with tequila (oops – bit late to the party on that). Then this crazy sh*t springs up in my instagram feed, courtesy of @maltjerry. Beer purists may object, but not me. If you don’t push at the edges everything gets boring. And besides, this beer, a Passionfruit Cheesecake Extra Sour from Omnipollo in Sweden has a rakish air of 1950s beehive hairdo, crossed with Mr Whippy, crossed with bleached-out squirty dog turd. What’s not to like? Now, where did I put my slushy machine…

The tyranny of choice

There’s been something of a furore over Carlos Brito, AB Inbev’s top dog, over his comments about beer drinkers being tired of choice – and for balance, it’s important to mention that he was specifically talking about distributors and retailers, and how much choice they could actually carry on shelves. Yet customer and consumer are umbilically linked, so by default he is saying the consumers too, are tired of choice. And according to ABI’s earnings release briefing, craft beer sales in the U.S. are slowing, hence it must be so.

As you can imagine, a furore. Because surprise, surprise, here are AB Inbev, now commanding one third of global beer sales, concerned about any affront to their brands, their competitive edge, their ability to dominate the market. An agenda of consumers ‘tired of choice’ means ‘you don’t need to stock unusual craft brands, but you do need to stock nationally / globally recognised brands‘ – ooooh, and look – we have lots of them.

The thing is though, the provocation from Brito does have more than an edge of truth about it, depending on how you view the world. Take the U.K. beer scene at the moment. ‘Explosion’ is not too dramatic a term for the number of breweries that have opened and continue to open. Each month sees a closure, but each month see many more openings. The leaky bucket overfloweth. Go one level below this and there are serious implications. Each brewery will have, say, a minimum of three brands, probably three of four core brands and then a selection of in / out products too. So let’s say that there are now (round numbers), 2000 breweries, each selling five beers. That’s 10,000 brands of beer minimum (someone I’m sure will have the actual numbers on this, providing they’re watching the press releases daily.). There are about 150,000 licensed premises in the UK. In theory that means most bars can carry an entirely different range from one another (OK, there may be 14 other ones carrying the same range nationwide).

Now clearly, this is theoretical. Because the truth is more stark. In fact, most bars have a limited number of taps and lines. Choice, in draught in particular, is not finite. Many of these lines will be keg, a small number hand pull. And of the 10,000 brands of beer on sale, probably 9,800 are craft and cask brands. The number of mainstream, keg dispensed, national brands is slight in comparison, dominant in sales though they are. 9,800 beers competing for, say, one of three hand pull spaces on a bar or God forbid, one of the keg lines owned by a multinational.

You can’t build recognised brands in this environment, unless you own an estate and demand they carry your range.

And there’s the rub. The truth is that there’s so much choice now that the market isn’t saturated, it’s super-saturated. Just like the supermarkets have bred a generation of deal junkies, rather than being tired of choice, we have a spoilt generation of beer drinkers who are trial junkies. You can see it where every you go. Looking along the bar. Spotting the new beers. Examining ABVs. Asking for recommendations, a sip, a third. Buying a flight of different beers. Every beer a different beer during the session. Switching between styles. Ever more choice at home.

Oh sure, there are implications for drinkers. It can be bamboozling. So many choices, where to start? Which style between the many I like? Which strength? Colour? Hoppiness or maltiness? Sweet, sour, bitter, dry? How to make sense of that, goodness knows.

There are implications for customers too. If you are in some way tied in to a brewer or supplier, how to offer the choice? How to run a business based on strong sellers with the roller coaster of guest beers being so important? How to manage the tensions (under the bar) between keg and cask, cider and lager, craft and real ale, spirit vs wine, whilst all the time having to deliver a stonking food offer. I love pubs, but it’s a hell of a job to get right, particularly with those damned drinkers constantly demanding something new every week.

But what’s the alternative? Take London just 10 years ago. I was in beer sales down there at the time. Most bars had some combination of Heineken, Kronenbourg, John Smiths and Strongbow, or Stella, Boddingtons, Becks Vier. Becks, Budweiser in the fridge. Everything else scrapping for space round the edges. Ok – so perhaps this picture is a little dramatised, but even if it’s only half true, compare it with today. Bars bursting with choice. Beers on rotation. New breweries introducing new styles. Rarely a Stella or Bud to be seen, at least in a place where you’d want to be seen too. Do we want to go back to a world of Stella, Becks, Corona wherever we go? Do we want to see Mr Brito’s thin, assassin smile widen further?

Give me the tyranny of choice any day.

Revitalisation

This week The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) announced their ‘Revitalisation Project’, called ‘Shaping The Future’. The subtext describes it as a review of their purpose, focus and strategy and has been brought about by the raft of changes and issues that have occurred since the consumer group founded in 1971.

Issues such as scope and purpose: should CAMRA be about real ale only, good beer, real ale, cider and perry or any number of potential combinations and additions? How widely should CAMRA campaign and on what issues?

Issues such as their frame of reference: should CAMRA be about beer drinkers, all alcohol drinkers, pub goers or frankly anyone with an interest? And should CAMRA focus on the on trade, with challenges around declining and closing pubs, often in rural communities and / or should it focus more on the increase in drinking in home?

Issues such as the changing nature of socialisation. In their data, they claim that there could be more coffee shops 10 years from now than pubs, and many of these coffee shops could be serving beer (and unlikely, you imagine, to be serving real ale, cider or perry).

Issues such as governmental pressure: actually it only gets a brief mention, but when you have the Chief Medical Officer and anti-alcohol pressure groups both making (many have argued, deeply spurious) claims about what constitutes a healthy level of alcohol consumption, then whether you’re Big Beer or craft beer, you need to consider your response.

The review needs to be root and branch. The issues are existential, or, at least, they are fundamental to what CAMRA is all about.

CAMRA Possibly the biggest issue, wide ranging in scope and for some pernicious in nature is rooted in the rise of craft beers that came about following the introduction of Small Brewer Duty Relief in 2002. A brief background: the increase in the number of breweries was something to be celebrated by CAMRA, they played a pivotal role in the policy and there’s no doubt that the increase in small breweries went hand in hand with the increase in number of cask beers available, not just because of our brewing and drinking culture but also because the process of brewing and packaging cask beer is more straightforward (which is not to say it is easy) and fundamentally, cheaper. There’s no need for pressurized kegs, expensive pasteurisation and filtration systems, automated filling machines and all the paraphernalia that attends filling kegs. With beer in casks, the ability to keep, handle and deliver a quality product is as much the responsibility of the publican as it is the brewery, if not more. And there in a nutshell, is the rub. Many craft brewers, not just the more ambitious, but also those dedicated and passionate about quality soon have an issue with cask. Put simply, that precious quality is just too variable. The result: more investment in kegging; more stimulus from the U.S. brewers (untroubled by the cask / keg question) and more ‘craft keg’ beers available.

Skip back 40 odd years to see the parallels. The ‘Big Six’ breweries actively managing down and phasing out their cask beer due to, you’ve guessed it, the variability in quality (amongst other things, like cost), often put down to the lack of training and skills of publicans. There were, of course, many publicans then, just as there are now who could serve a cracking pint of cask. And there were many, probably more, who find keeping cask, fettling it, tapping, spiling, broaching – all of that – troublesome and perhaps not worth the effort.

Another issue for cask is seemingly prosaic but critical – yield. In a keg, the central spear reaches down through the inside of the keg and almost touches the base. The beer is propelled out using a dispense gas. Finish one keg; wrench off the coupler, attach to the new keg, carry on serving. Industry estimates of waste from a keg put it at around 5-8%. Not so with cask. More beer is left in the cask (some because it is the yeast sediment, the remainder due to the cask shape) and more is lost as the last drinkable beer splutters through from the old cask and the first draughts are pulled through from the new. And then there’s the beer left in the pipes overnight, which (you hope) is pulled through and discarded. How much is lost? Well estimates vary from 15% up to 30% and more (that’s from an industry source by the way, not an arbitrary guess). Put simply, it’s very easy to pour 30% of your profits from cask down the plug-hole.

Which is not, in any way, to say ‘give up on cask’. But to not recognise – and in this case, for CAMRA to not fully recognise – that today, the situation is wholly different that it was when they founded. We are not talking about replacing Draught Bass with Worthington ‘E’. We are not replacing Courage Directors with Watney’s Red Barrel. We are not talking about getting rid of John Smith Magnet and shoving on Webster’s Yorkshire Bitter or Trophy Best. We are talking about a bar or pub having a crack at selling any one of thousands, literally thousands, of exciting, tasty, experimental, classic, not-quite-right, full on, challenging, mundane, surprising beers that just so happen to be packaged in a container called a ‘keg’.

As someone who runs a brand building company as my day job, there’s an interesting parallel here and something for CAMRA to consider. Whatever they do, they mustn’t believe that ‘the job on cask is done’. The revival of cask beer has been sensational, but despite appearances to the contrary perhaps, it remains fragile. Most beer drunk in the UK is keg lager. Pubs are closing at 27 per week (according to CAMRA) and many, many more remain unsustainable. In a typical bar, there are only a few cask lines, and now with the amount of new breweries, there is so much choice for the publican that running a small cask led brewery is horrendously tough – commercially in particular. Lay on top of that all the issues with keeping cask, serving a high quality product and lower yields and the odds remain stacked against it. We need cask champions still. We need a consumer group fighting its corner. We need to keep on educating publicans to the wonders of cask beer and the criticality of quality. We cannot afford to get bored or distracted. CAMRA must keep the core of what they do – protecting real ale (and for me real cider and perry too – they probably need the help even more) – keeping it alive and fundamental to their central purpose. Great brands keep their core dynamic and fresh. CAMRA’s core is cask.

Yet great brands also focus on what’s coming up – what’s new and may be the ‘core of tomorrow’. So CAMRA must have a duel focus on cask and great beer, no matter how the brewery chooses to package it. Of course, ‘great beer’ is subjective. Pilsner Urquell, served from the tank at The White Horse in Parson’s Green is delicious. It is ‘great beer’. But PU, like many others is now a cart horse in the stable of a large multi-national, consolidating brewery. Not only do they have enough money to look after themselves, they are also only driven by profit. If PU proves to be a challenge to grow, it will sadly be reprioritised or even discarded and the focus will move elsewhere. So we are talking about a different form of ‘great beer’. CAMRA must champion beer from independent brewers, who are fashioned as much from sharing their passion, championing brewing and brewing heritage, making products with integrity not just efficiency, as they are from making a decent wage. And not just small brewers either – but independent brewers. From Elgood’s to Fuller’s, from Brew By Numbers to Magic Rock, from Marston’s to Skinner’s – even, whisper it – to BrewDog too.

Because let’s be clear. CAMRA have done a terrific job saving cask beer. But the independent craft beer ‘movement’ has done a significantly better job in making the whole beer category fresh and vibrant and attractive to people wouldn’t have even considered beer in the past at all. It might not have been directed nor seem coherent, but it’s done it – and in a quarter of the time. If CAMRA isn’t willing to stand for that, then it deserves to lose its relevance.