You are going to see a lot of media over the next few days about John Cleese, Canadian Club and beer fairies. It’s the latest stage in a very large campaign by the drinks maker Beam to position Canadian Club as the alternative to beer.
It says something fairly powerful about the plummeting perception of mainstream beer that an RTD can position itself as the elegant face of modern drinking instead of beer; that a whisky owned by Jim Beam that bills itself as the “‘unofficial’ Whisky of Prohibition”, “rumoured to be Al Capone’s favourite” can successfully pitch itself as the preferred choice over the traditional ‘beverage of moderation’.
As we have said previously, the nations two largest brewers have got to take a good hard look at themselves and their marketing in answering how this has happened.
The supposedly viral ad campaign featured below shows the image of beer that they suggest beer represents. (we say supposedly, because if you see it on a site or blog it is more than likely paid advertising. The laughingly named Viral Ad Network approached us to run it, we declined. Of course, now we’re running it for free but there was no other way to illustrate the story. The irony sorta kills me.)
Canadian Club’s version of a beer drinker
An ad that seeks to reduce something to such an absurd stereotype can only hope to succeed if it is playing upon something that is reconisable. Is there a nub of truth in the Canadian Club portrayal of beer?
Bearing in mind that beer advertisers will be trying to identify with their target audience in their ads, let’s see how they portray their customers…
XXXX Gold’s version of a beer drinker
VB’s version of a beer drinker
Even the iconic, spectacular and hugely funny Big Ad looks like it could have been cast from the same group who populate the beer fairy ads.
And CUB’s most recent attempts to salvage its star brand from a prolonged freefall managed to make beer drinkers seem like yobs while at the same time making fun of the people that Canadian Club is successfully targeting.
Astoundingly, when it comes to presenting the image of their company, Fosters is able to paint a much more inclusive and positive picture of beer than they are able to do about their main product. Of course, they save these images for their website where no-one will see them. You wouldn’t want to put them on a billboard, would you?
While the big two brewers wring their hands in desperation at ‘the weather’, the changing palates of a generation and the increased competition from other beverages, perhaps they might also ask themselves whether it’s possible to reach beer’s traditional drinkers without making them all look like fat, unkempt, boorish parodies. If they can, they may be able to appeal to their traditional market while not driving away the ones who don’t look and act like buffoons.
Incidentally, full credit to Fairfax’s Karl Quinn for striking the right note of cynicism over the campaign in his piece on Brisbanetimes.com.au.
Update – It’s interesting to read this article by Simon Canning, The Australian’s advertising and media writer, that the brand manager for Canadian Club is Trent Chapman, former brand manager for VB. The CC campaign shows a frightening insight into the market of beer and this confirms my suspicion that even the large brewers know that this is the image that they’re portraying of beer.
Ironically, the campaign has been masterminded by a former marketer for VB who helped perpetuate the brand’s image as a drink for those with a hard earned thirst who wear singlets and stubbies.
Great article. I love this series of articles but it really gets to the core of why marketing can sometimes matter more than the product itself.
Equally I’m not sure that fixing the perception of beer created by the ‘big brands’ would necessarily change the market for the better in terms of quality produce.
I think that a lot of these campaigns should be treated more on the basis of the brand they represnt, rather than the category of beverage they are trying to sell.
Beer is constantly being treated as a second rate beverage. It is portayed as being less sophisticated and cultured than other alcoholic beverages, namely wine and whisk(e)y. People who more fully understand beer and the many different types of product that are available in the market place, would be able to better articulate that it is not a second rate beverage. It would be like advertising all wine with stanley red lambrusco as the product with the highest public profile.
It would be interesting to see what the advertising execs real idea of beer drinkers is (and wether they are beer drinkers themselves).
The independant small brewers need to band together start their own marketing campaign. There seems to be a greater ground swell now for craft beer and these products are the ones that are going to really challenge how beer is thought of in the wider community.
You suggest a really interesting idea there Rob, which is something groups like Australian Lamb (http://www.australian-lamb.com/) with their Sam K ads and the MLA (http://www.mla.com.au/) do with their ads featuring Sam Neil.
By having a combined group that represents a number of various producers, they have managed to give a brand face and lift the over all perception for the category, rather than just focusing on one brand.
Why couldn’t craft beer in Australia do the same? Lord knows none of the craft brewers in Australia are doing enough volume to afford the media they would need to compete with the brand messages of someone like CUB, Fosters or Canadian club.
It’s interesting to see now that John Cleese is continuing the ‘beer fairies’ campaign over Twitter.
Maybe if marketers thought about beer drinkers as people rather than a single target market, it would have a different result. The beer drinker could be almost anyone, that’s the beautiful thing about beer. There have been many times as a bartender where I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a drink order from someone who I wouldn’t have guessed to be a beer enthusiast.
Yep, another good and thought-provoking article.
Those beer fairy ads have been annoying the hell out of me the past little while.
And as for John Cleese getting in on the act, cripes the man is just absolutely prostituting his public image for anything these days. He admits time and again in his live shows that he is currently desperate for money because of payments resulting from yet another failed marriage. It’s a damn shame given his comic genius and great contributions to popular culture in the past.