Victoria Bitter has softened its image over the years. “And if you made a beer a ‘gay’ beer, well, I can’t imagine many men would be caught dead drinking it.” But the kind of ‘man’ Mr McLucas is referring to may not be the same beer-drinking man of 20 years ago, according to marketing director of Carlton and United Breweries Paul Donaldson. Though Mr Donaldson agreed with Mr McLucas on the patronising nature of specific “gay” beers, he said that even the most “classic Australian bloke” brands in the business were evolving with the times. “Without getting too deep here you’ve got a significant changing the expression of masculinity in Australia – what behaviour is acceptable for male,” he said.

“We hear this from research groups – there are a whole lot of quite fundamental changes going on. “The brands that aren’t evolving … we’re seeing quite heavy declines with those ones.” Though recent Neilson results show the domestic beer industry shrunk overall in the last 12 months – a diminished market the majors are attributing to bad weather and one-off events – “traditional, brown-bottle” beer brands were the worst hit, Mr Donaldson said. Comparatively, craft-beers and the newer, “clear-bottle” brews recorded significant growth, evident in sales of brands from both CUB and rival beer corporation Lion Nathan. It’s hard to see why someone would pick a beer based on their gender or sexuality – people drink a beer because they like the taste and the brand resonates with them.

Lion Nathan corporate affairs director James Tait said the “next generation” beer represented by their Summer Bright lager was proving popular, even as their classic XXXX Bitter lost ground. Mr Tait said that the trend reflected a beer-drinking population that was more diverse and inclusive than it had been in the past. “You want to be very inclusive in terms of how you market to social groups rather than being very specific,” he said. “It’s hard to see why someone would pick a beer based on their gender or sexuality – people drink a beer because they like the taste and the brand resonates with them.” Mr Tait and Mr Donaldson referred to brands such as Toohey’s Extra Dry, Corona or Carlton Draught as big-name brands already achieving what a “gay beer” ostensibly aims to – they’re products attractive to image-conscious social-drinkers that don’t alienating the traditional market.

“There’s a risk of looking at a market and think, ‘great, we’ll launch a targeted beer’, but history would suggest that can often be a poor move because people feel patronised,” Mr Donaldson said. “Most beers that have ever targeted females have failed because females think, ‘hang on, I want a legitimate beer just as much as any guy does’. “If you look at the latest VB stuff it’s evolved from just being about a hard earned thirst to being a real beer for real blokes and that’s about as far as we can take it.” Mr Donaldson said a brand like VB could never appear to openly target at metrosexuals because that wouldn’t be “genuine or legitimate”. Loading

“There’s a point there where you’ve got to protect those brands,” he said. “Most of those brands are for your classic Australian bloke. To push them beyond that isn’t consistent.”