A couple of weeks ago I wrote a story looking at some comments made by Foster’s Group chief executive John Pollaers in a speech when he relaunched the newly beer and cider only CUB brand. I queried his use of the word ‘lagering’ being used to describe the maturation process for Crown Lager and suggested it may be a little cute to apply a historical word that suggests an extended production time to a beer that takes a few days to produce. I thought at the time it was a bit of a throw-away line in a speech. Instead it was actually the soft launch of Crown Lager’s new marketing campaign called ‘Time’. The current big push in maintaining the ‘premiumness’ of CUB’s biggest selling ‘premium’ beer is the time that it takes to produce. This speech has been followed by a campaign that includes the ad campaign to the right.
Quite apart from the use of the word ‘lagering’, there is the issue of what exactly is the time that Crown takes to brew? The ad suggests the time taken to make Crown is something very special about the brew. As I noted in the previous article, even though it is a feature of their campaign, it is impossible to get a precise figure on how long Crown Lager takes to produce. The figure of four days I used was derived from a comment made by a brewery tour guide a few years ago. In discussions I have had with CUB over the last few days this wasn’t corrected, so we can assume that it’s no longer than four days. But I have been constantly told by others in the brewng industry that the ‘lagering’ or cold maturation period may even be less than 24 hours.
Whatever the correct figure, if you’re going to make an asset of a particular feature of your product you are opening yourself up to questions about that feature – you also have a duty to disclose, so I posed the following questions to CUB:
Are you willing to:
- give an indication for how long the brewing process is for VB from start to bottling
- what part of that do you regard as ‘lagering’
- advise how long the brewing process is for Crown from start to bottling
- advise what portion of that is regarded as ‘lagering’
I was advised:
“Crown Lager is made with fine ingredients, is lagered twice as long as its mainstream stablemates, and we’re proud of the beer’s quality and the loyal following it has enjoyed by for decades. We can’t share specifics of our recipes or brew times for any of our beers as they’re commercially sensitive, and we accept comparisons with boutique, craft scale brewers to our operations are always going to be different. RE Crown’s marketing, our new campaign is called Time, it’s speaks to the time taken in general in making Crown Lager, and to its heritage.”
But with the time taken being so important as to warrant its own marketing campaign, surely the customer is entitled to be told just how long that period is, rather than just ‘twice as long’ as mainstream beers? Especially when they won’t say how long the mainstream stablemates are matured for. If it was such a source of pride, surely it should be shouted from the rooftops?[pullquote]Highlighting the fact that Crown is ‘lagered’ twice as long as its mainstream stablemates does less to raise Crown’s stature than it diminishes mainstream beer’s.[/pullquote]
With the emphasis on the time taken to mature Crown being designed to stress CUB’s flagship’s quality and its premiumness, I wanted to get a sense of what other brewers do. I contacted a number of small brewers to ask about their lagers and how long they take to produce. The responses I got were “2-3 weeks”, “28 days” and “six weeks”. Even assuming the four days for Crown which, in the absence of any official indication, looks less and less likely, does it really warrant a campaign glorifying the time spent.
Crown Lager is what it is. In process terms it is well made and it is consistent, it is made using quality ingredients by people who are highly skilled. Importantly, a lot of people like it, which is why we drink beer. But, no matter how much CUB would like to dress it up, it is still a highly industrialised product produced in huge volumes exceptionally quickly. Highlighting the fact that Crown is ‘lagered’ twice as long as its mainstream stablemates does less to raise Crown’s stature than it serves to diminish mainstream beer’s. When the logical comparisons are made to other premium and craft beers, it highlights that mainstream beers are the fast food of the beverage world and leaves Crown looking like the McDonald’s Grand Angus Burger of beers. The only difference being that McDonald’s introduces a note of irony when Michael Caton intones, “it’s a little bit fancy”.
When lavish marketing campaigns are being conducted to tell the public told that this is the the best they can aspire to in the world of beer, perhaps it’s not surprising that drinkers are losing interest and turning away from it in droves.
While Time might be described as putting lipstick on a pig , perhaps more troubling is the ad’s tagline, “Time. The fifth ingredient”.
Given the widespread use by beer marketers of the Reinheitsgebot, or German Beer Purity Law, to emphasise the quality of their beers, beer’s four main ingredients are commonly known. Beers made with only malt, water, hops and yeast are held out to be higher quality. As the T-Shirt (right) shows, craft brewers regularly highlight their use of just these four ingredients to emphasise the quality of their beers. If time is the icing on the cake for Crown Lager and is heralded as the ‘fifth ingredient’, the beer’s marketing would seem to be suggesting that it has only four other ingredients, which would have to be malt, water, hops and yeast. All good, except that Crown has five material ingredients…the real fifth ingredient is cane sugar, which would make time the sixth.
Even if it is a case snappy copywriting winning over clear presentation of the facts and the intention wasn’t to deceive, the plain reading of the Crown tagline is that it is suggesting that Crown is an all-malt beer, which it simply isn’t.
Time might be relative, but it is still Crown’s sixth ingredients – not its fifth.
“Time might be relative, but it is still Crown’s sixth ingredients – not its fifth.”
Ergo a ‘false and misleading representation and contravening the Trade Practices Act, 1974.
Except time isn’t really an ingredient is it?
Didn’t you know the TPA has been repealed?
Seriously, good journalism, Matt.
Cheers Dave – it was a hard one to write when you genuinely like the people who make the beer, as well as the people who market it. But making such a feature out of time for a beer like Crown and going out of your way to call it ‘lagering’ in your marketing just hurts beers that genuinely do use time – including Matilda Bay’s – to condition their beers. It confuses the beer-buying public and serves to lessen the genuine differences between craft beer and more mainstream beer.
“We can’t share specifics of brew times for any of our beers as they’re commercially sensitive” (edited)
What a crock. Conditioning periods hardly represent commercial sensitivities. Your grain, hop syrup and sugar loads are sensitive information but it is time to fess up on just how premium you lager is.
great piece Matt.
Hi guys,
Love your integrity challenge to CUB on Crown.
Ask the question about “Since 1919” as I was led to believe from earlier spin the first drop commercially brewed and sold was for QE2 visit to Oz or Coronation or something in 1953 and it was Foster’s Crown Lager – not Crown which now claims brewed since 1919???
Hi – thanks for that. The official position, as provided through their media releases over the years, is:
About Crown Lager:
– For the first 35 years of its life, Crown Lager was reserved exclusively for visiting and travelling diplomats, but in 1954 it was launched to the public to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s inaugural visit to Australia.
– Crown’s unique brewing style has remained essentially unchanged since 1919. It is brewed with only the finest barley and Pride of Ringwood hops, resulting in a creamy fruitiness, a rich malty mid-palate, balanced with a crisp clean finish.
So while the date might be correct, there is a carefully constructed brand image here that doesn’t really hold up. I’m not sure what is ‘unique’ about their brewing style, but I am certain that in 1919 it was brewed for much longer than it is today. Unfortunately, given that their position is “We can’t share specifics of our recipes or brew times for any of our beers as they’re commercially sensitive.” it would seem pointless asking them about it to clarify.
I’m not sure what they mean by it has remained ‘essentially unchanged’ since 1919 because it’s one of those statements that seems to be saying something concrete, untl you look at it and is is so broad that I could equally and just as accurately say that James Squire porter is brewed according to a technique that has remained essentially unchanged since 1788…in that it is mashed, boiled and fermented. If Crown was once lagered for weeks and is now lagered for a day, the actual technique has changed dramatically, even if the essentials are the same. It’s a claim you could make about any beer.
Also, the construction of the sentence is designed – in my view – to play up the heritage of the beer and to give the impression that you’re drinking a beer that is essentially unchanged since it was given to diplomats in 1919. Pride of Ringwood hops weren’t developed until 1953 and the way it is made has changed over time as well. Pedantic, maybe, but perhaps marketers need to be a little more pedantic in telling their stories of heritage and tradition when all that is effectively the same is the name on the bottle.
I will continue to not buy their beers. Frankly I’d rather be thirsty than drink a Crown anyway.
Cheers Darrell – and that’s fine, but a lot of people would also say that same thing about Belgian ales…not because they’re no good but because they don’t like the beer. A lot of people do like Crown Lager. The article wasn’t designed to rubbish the beer. As the article says, in process terms Crown is well made and it is consistent, it is made using quality ingredients by people who are highly skilled. As a business CUB are proud of the beer. A lot of people genuinely like the beer. Unfortunately, none of these are things that are being highlighted in the marketing and they’re not particularly sexy. The article was a comment on the way the beer is being marketed, which I think is loose with the facts, creates a false impression as to exactly how long the beer takes to produce and in doing so misleads people who just want a beer and don’t necessarily want to thoroughly research every buying decision they make.
If they were genuinely proud of the time it takes to make Crown they would tell us how long it takes to make, rather than just saying “twice as long”. That’s like a car maker saying ‘we have twice as many speakers as our base model, but we won’t tell you how many because it’s commercially sensitive’. If it’s an asset, tell us what it is and let us decide whether that makes it something that we want to base our buying decision on. If they don’t think giving us the actual figure enhances the brand, then the marketing is deceptive.
Love the article. It gets me that in these times people are becoming more interested in craft beer and homebrewing, hence more educated about beer and processes, yet these guys are still trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Personally I don’t drink CUB beers but did have some respect for them as they had to be doing something right to have such a large market share. But that just went out the window.