Not Every Beer Is A Winner

Beer is big business these days, producers are always looking for that next big thing to steal market share from their competitors, and hopefully shore up future revenue streams. If they get onto a winner, the competitors copy it and before you know it you have the low-carb craze of the 2000’s!

The Low Carb craze consumed the world with talk of beers being 1/3 the carbs of regular beers, which sounds amazing, but in reality it ain’t that impressive when you do the numbers. A low carb beer might be 0.7g per 100ml, as opposed to a regular beer being 2.2g per 100ml. Yes it is one third of the carbs, but does it make that much difference? Have a six pack of low carb beer and you would consume somewhere near 16g of carbs, as opposed to 50g with a full strength beer. I just don’t think it’s a huge deal, must be like eating a small fries vs a medium?

Having said that, I am a proud supporter of the Dad Bod and probably don’t qualify as a person who really watches their carbs…many other people do, and so I guess that’s why this marketing campaign has been so successful!

When you get momentum, such as on this occasion, it takes a long time to slow down and that means cash in the bank! But…I know this will shock you, not all new beer products, fads or gimmicks are winners! “What?” I hear you say…yes it is true. For every Low Carb fad there would be 10 other ones that either fail or only just hit the mark.

A lot of research goes into launching a new product and it is a fascinating thing to be a part of. In the big beer companies that manage multiple trademarks it is very scientific.

I am probably over simplifying it, but it goes a bit like this…

A future or current trend is identified, The potential target market is pinpointed, Research/interviews conducted to see if the two gel together The innovation team then looks at the trademarks in the portfolio and determines the best fit for the new beer style. Some brands suit young vs old demographics, or sporty people over working class and even some will be more female or male friendly. Once the fit is established the marketing team kicks in and comes up with the brand name and associated taglines, campaigns, packaging etc. to support the product.

Somewhere between steps 3 and 5, things can go wrong for many reasons.

Trends can change, an event might occur in the world that renders your brand name inappropriate (we have a bottleshop chain in my hometown called 9/11 that decided to stick with their name, despite the obvious), your trademark might have a bad period, or the target market might move away from it. I guess what I am saying is, despite all of the research pointing to the product being a winner, and the best intentions by the business…sometimes products will flop, and it isn’t always obvious as to why.

On the flip-side, like some of the examples further below, someone is getting fired because they made a stupid decision and the problem WAS obvious!

Current Trends

So what’s hot right now, and will it continue to be hot, or will we see it on my list of bad ideas in the future?

Lower alcohol beers

Mid Strength is still a big seller in Australia, but not necessarily everywhere in the world. International Premium, Mainstream, and even Craft Beers are all trying to capture a slice of the market. Plus, being a lower ABV means cost savings on Tax!

Craft Beer

Still a small slice of the pie but still showing year on year growth. IPA’s a key to this growth as consumers palates mature and can handle more flavoursome beers.

Nitro Beers

Seeing this a bit in America with Sam Adams launching an entire line of Nitro Infused cans and the originator, Guinness doing a nitro infuse IPA. Many craft breweries like to play with nitro with their stouts on tap, much like Guinness, but it’s more difficult to do it in cans.

Flavoured Beers

Lime, Lemon, Strawberry, hybrid apple beers, its all being tried before and it seems it is going again! Americans still have their Bud Light Lime, XXXX Summer Bright recently introduced a Lime variant and in New Zealand there are multiple examples of lower alcohol citrus infused beers…in NZ, I thought they were craft beer mad?

Hard Root Beer

Seeing this in the USA with “Not Your Fathers” alcoholic Root Beer and other breweries scrambling to get a slice of the pie. Fortune magazine has called it the next big thing in Craft Beer.

And now the part you are all waiting for…the failures. You sick bastards, getting enjoyment out of others failures! I know that what you all came here to read about, so I will cut the crap and get on with part 1 of my list of failures in beer marketing:

The Not So Great Ideas

Tap King

This is a recent failure buy big brewers Lion (my ex employer) in Australia that cost mega bucks to set up. I remember being really excited about this idea when it was launched internally, it seemed like there was a market for that beer lover who mostly entertained at home but wanted a pub quality draught beer experience.

This was meant to be the Nespresso of the beer world and appeal to those people who didn’t mind paying more for a premium product to have it pouring fresh in their home…it even came in Apple-esque fancy packaging to make you feel really special!

My opinion on why it went wrong

Other than being expensive (I loved the idea of drinking it when I didn’t have to pay for it), I think the consumer experience failed for two reasons:

Firstly, the quality of the experience. The beer often poured very foamy if it wasn’t chilled down within in inch of its life and resulted in a lot of wastage. Secondly, the products on offer didn’t quite hit the mark. Remember, this was the Nespresso of beer systems in the home, so brands like Tooheys New, Tooheys Extra Dry and XXXX Gold probably weren’t quite the right fit. I would have liked to have seen Little Creatures Pale Ale, but that is a non pasteurised beer and wouldn’t have worked, or a Tap King Nitro that served Guinness!

Coors Rocky Mountain Sparkling Water

This is a fairly old one (circa 1990), but it’s a great example of when a company thinks they can slap their well-known logo onto something and think it will sell.

Coors has used the idea of chilled is best and cold brewed and pure spring water from the rocky mountains for years, so I guess that is why they thought they could slap some bubbles into the water they use to brew and then try and flog it off to capture a slice of the booming bottled water market.

I guess it made sense form an overall company standpoint…we have bottling plants, we have water, supply chain is sorted and we can borrow upon other relationships to get distributions…but it just didn’t work! By the mid 90’s the product was on life support and eventually deleted some time around 1997.

My opinion on why it went wrong

Slapping a Coors logo front and centre, the same logo so famous for making alcoholic beverages, maybe might have made people think for just a second that the water had alcohol in it? In the cut throat war at the point of purchase, where a consumers mind gets bombarded with tricks to make them change their mind, maybe that one second of doubt was enough to make the consumer switch to another brand.

Carlton Cold SHOT

Sometime in the early 2000’s, the powers that be at Carlton & United Breweries must have had a brain fart and decided that we needed to get more alcohol into the lads at the pub, and infused their favourite mega-swill beer with a shot of vodka!

Genius!

It has to be said that it was probably the same team that decided consumers wanted to drink Carlton Cold out of plastic 500ml bottle!

The result of the innovation was Carlton Cold SHOT! CUB weren’t the first company to try and combine beer and spirits in Australia, Tooheys failed with its beer, tequila and lime mixer, Mez in 2000. CUB failed a few years later!

My opinion on why it went wrong

Do you really need my opinion on this? On a side note, how funny is it that Carlton Cold has gone full circle in terms of its ABV. The Cold Shot version was 6% back then, but these days the current iteration of the Carlton Cold trademark sits at a very politically correct 3.5%, almost half the ABV! Oh how times have changed!

Budweiser BE

Speaking of combining two drinks into one super drink, Budweiser had a crack at it in the USA in 2004.

Trying to capitalise on the rise of caffeinated drinks like Red Bull (oh geez, remember those nights and the following mornings after one too many vodka red bulls?!?!?) in the early 2000’s, Bud decided to mix up a bit of a cocktail of beer, caffeine, ginseng and guarana!

Yeah, so they pretty much tipped a red bull into a Bud Light and put it out for the consumers to try, fly and vomit their way through a night! The beer was packed full of caffeine (as much as a 500ml energy drink) and 6.6%!

Something tells me that you drink a six pack of this and you will be up all night, and not in a good way! In 2008 they removed caffeine from the recipe due to public pressures and I think it disappeared off the shelves in the subsequent years.

Their tagline sounded like something that might have come from the mouth of a white 90’s rapper: Budweiser Extra, “Be-to-the-E”…so smooth. Their press advertising was a little bit suspect as well, as you can see here!

My opinion on why it went wrong

Trying to cover all bases with one product…you cant try and be everything to everyone! On another side note, I didt see a Facebook page that was calling for the beer to be resurrected…don’t think the 47 page supporters will quite be enough to convince AB INbev to bring it back.

Animee Beer

How many times have we seen big brewers try and brew a beer that is aimed at women, and fail?

Time and time again the marketing departments come up with bland liquids presented in clear bottles with brightly coloured labels and names like Chick, Karmi, Cherie, Animee!

This beer that was made by Molson Coors and only lasted a year!

What a surprise that a beer aimed directly at women failed to find an audience? Women don’t need feminine beers thrown at them with “tampon like” advertising to back them up…we just need to make the idea of drinking a beer more appealing and accessible.

My opinion on why it went wrong:

Women who drink beer do so because they like the taste of it, they don’t necessarily want added cranberry juice, or a twist of citrus, or have it served in a pink bottle…let’s just make them feel more comfortable drinking regular beer.

There will be more stories along this line in the future! Next time I will tell you about Hahn White!

I am not sure what it says about me as a person, but I really enjoyed writing this article and taking pleasure the pain of these beer companies! #sorrynotsorry. I still have heaps of examples, such as these mentioned here, so I will call this part 1 of an ongoing series of Beer Marketing failures, how’s that?

Bit of a change to the site this week, I have decided to drop the Beer O’Clock Week In Review from my weekly timetable, as I will be concentrating on sharing these links, stories, videos and opinions via my Twitter and Facebook pages. So if you aren’t following me on those social media sites, jump on and click the relevant button to keep up to date. If you still need more, check out my YoutTube channel or Instagram feed and you can also sign up for email notifications here.

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BTW, did you see my review of Ballast Point IPA Big Eye IPA, or catch my latest Video?

Until Wednesday, when I share my Video Review of Eviltwin Brewing Molotov Lite !

Cheers to Great Beers!