Viewpoint: CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival

Marketing expert Jeremy Baker explains why he believes the Campaign for Real Ale's GBBF is a disaster for the trade.

CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) has become the public face of the British beer industry and this is a mistake. The CAMRA image is a disaster for everyone else in brewing. CAMRA is, by default, taking the beer industry in exactly the wrong direction, mainly due to the laziness of mainstream brewing.

Arriving at the GBBF, you firstly notice that there is no floor to the Olympia venue. Or, at least, there is only the industrial floor on which all other exhibitions place their own floor. From this poor start, the exhibition moves further and further away from modern consumer values.

This may seem picky and would not matter if the GBBF was a private event. But the exhibition has become a major determinant of beer's public image today. And that is a mistake.

Beer today is engaged in a fight-to-the-death with the wine industry. The beer sales graph is moving inexorably downwards, and the wine sales graph is moving steadily upwards. Beer leaders must focus on these trends and try to understand the reasons.

Wine is modern. And it is not just wine that is a threat.

Let's look at a modern 26-year-old career woman, who is having a drink at Blend, in London's Covent Garden. She is the important one because it is her interests that others will follow. As she sits down she is offered a list of drinks. Here are the options: 54 cocktails, 16 wines, 16 vodkas, 11 rums, seven gins and five beers. Now tell me that beer is not in crisis.

Beer, as represented by CAMRA, is tired and formulaic. The old "rebel" image has become another formula.

Let's ask the consumer to make a list of CAMRA qualities. Key words are beards, sandals and beer belly.

Now, let's look at the values of today's modern consumer. Think of Zara clothes, metrosexuals (straight men who want to look lovely), Robbie Williams, and Bluewater shopping mall. Notice that Marks and Spencer has hired the man who made Selfridges into such an exciting place (chief executive Vittorio Radice).

The consumer's desirable qualities are not beards and sandals and paunches. This is brutally unkind but you know it is right.

The consumer has moved from products to lifestyle. Consumers are deluged with products. The battle is now between clutter and minimalism, and significantly Marks and Spencer is starting a whole new division based around the minimalist domestic lifestyle.

Change isn't impossible. Until recently, MFI was the boring British furniture store that was destined to always lose to Ikea, the cosmopolitan company selling a new lifestyle. But MFI moved from product to lifestyle. It changed from furniture to "whole room displays". Profits are up for MFI. The bad news is that CAMRA is still at the product stage. At Olympia, only one major brand was offering lifestyle, and that was Adnams. It had its own beach and offered the East Anglia beach lifestyle that people should want when they buy Adnams.

Why has CAMRA become the consumer's view of beer? Why has the industry allowed this to happen?

Partly the reason is the guilt that brewing still feels towards CAMRA. Once upon a time, CAMRA really did rescue the industry. But, to quote Tony Blair: "Hey, let's move on."

Partly, it is the sheer laziness of mainstream brewing. There isn't an alternative to CAMRA's festivals. Big brewers are just too lazy to create something different. CAMRA represents beer because the big boys have come up with no alternative.

Partly, it is the meanness of the old establishment. It may seem cunning to let CAMRA's free volunteers do beer publicity for nothing, but this is very expensive in terms of its impact upon the industry's long-term image.

Another reason is the victim psychology of the beer industry. Beer people are liable to occupy a bunker where they talk about the unique difficulties of their industry. For example, they complain about tax. But, please shut up about tax. Beer does pay excessive tax, but so does petrol, and you don't see BP going bust.

On tax, either make a real do-or-die effort to fight the tax burden, or drop the whole subject. Why not be proud for the tax that you pay? Tell consumers how many schools and hospitals you have helped to build.

Where does the exhibition go from here? CAMRA must be made to modernise and to move in the direction of today's consumers. Alternatively, let's have the rich people of the industry produce a national beer event that appeals to today's consumer.

Oscar Wilde talked about the dangers of killing the thing that you love. CAMRA, this is what you are doing today, and you must stop. You are damaging the industry that you love.

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