Fuller's crisp approach

John Roberts, the man credited for the surge in London Pride, looked to crisp giant Walker's for inspiration. By Mark Stretton.

The relationship between beer and crisps is savoured by pub-goers up and down the land but the humble potato snack probably means more to John Roberts than most. The head of Fuller's brewing and brands division is credited with spearheading the surge of London Pride to the number one premium ale in the UK - but he has done it with one eye firmly on the crisp market. To a degree he has applied the same model to the ale that Walker's successfully executed to make the crisp Britain's biggest food brand.

In a previous life John came to appreciate the Walker's brand when he worked for rival snack firm KP. "Walker's is a brand I came to greatly admire," he says. "It spread out from the East Midlands into this huge national brand.

"It stuck to its guns in terms of price, quality, high reinvestment levels, great advertising and innovation - it was the first to introduce foil packaging. I was a victim of it at KP. I admired this machine - once it was off you couldn't stop it. It became the biggest food brand in Britain and it earned it.

"That model is fixed in my head."

Although clearly there is a bit more to it than borrowing a few strategic principles from Gary Linekar's favourite foodstuff, there are clear parallels between the snack brand - not to mention some other blue-chip consumer brands - and Fuller's London Pride. The principles of premium quality, integrity, clear focus and standards are watchwords for Pride that regularly punctuate John Roberts' vocabulary.

London Pride is now in 10,000 UK pubs and, against a backdrop of market decline, is one of the overwhelming success stories in the cask ale category. That success has been built on the foundations of a rounded, premium liquid backed by great marketing.

But what makes a great brand? "You need a sustained, clear proposition, absolute focus and integrity," says John. "Whether you are BMW or Heinz, quality is fundamental and the key is not to get side-tracked by cheap distribution."

Mentioning cheap distribution is as close as John comes to aiming a broadside at other brewers who have bought their way into pub companies by sacrificing margin - for Fuller's is well known for its tight principles on price. It has not bought its way into one in six UK pubs. It is there, the company says, through customer demand as a must-stock product.

Fuller's Beer Company, which also includes session ale Chiswick, ESB (Extra Special Bitter) and the fast-growing Honeydew in its portfolio, turned in another impressive performance last week when the group reported profits up 14 per cent to £7.8m, thanks to increased volumes and improved efficiencies. "We have outperformed the market," says John. "This has been a tough year for cask ale, which I get the impression took a hammering during the hot summer last year. We have bucked the trend."

Unlike many regional brewers that rely on their own pubs to sell beer, just 14 per cent of Fuller's beer is consumed through its own estate of 238 pubs and hotels, which is testament to the strength of its brands.

The company is particularly cute when it comes to working with newspapers and media groups, fully exploiting the nature of its business. Contacts at ITV, the Evening Standard and Capital Radio are regularly invited to the brewery for the Fuller's experience and to sample the wares. "We work very hard at the relationships with media owners," says John. "Whenever we launch a new campaign we invite these people to the brewery to explain the messages. And naturally we feed and water them too."

Fuller's has benefited from these relationships and was the first company to use the live technology that ITV piloted during the Rugby World Cup last year. Real-time messages flashed up on London Pride ads during half-time commercial breaks, relating to the score during the match. Fuller's also enjoyed key slots, often as the very last ad to appear before kick-off. "Many people felt we were sponsoring the World Cup because of the great slots we had during the breaks, but we weren't," he says. "It's another example of where we can't outspend our rivals but we can outsmart them."

Some London Pride adverts have accidentally punched far beyond their weight. When Michael Owen scored his first goal for England, London Pride provided the billboard backdrop. Ditto Wayne Rooney. And when newspapers pictured batsman Andrew Strauss scoring a century on his England debut at Lord's in their cricket reports, London Pride was once again handily placed. Of late, the brewer has run a raft of newspaper ads to develop the link between sport and London Pride.

This autumn it will unveil a new TV campaign which was shot by Kevin McDonald, the director of award-winning climbing film Touching the Void. "This will once again be in the spirit of the brand," says John. "It is not high energy; it is very deep, about real people. It is once again taking the high ground. We will have a very powerful advert that will distance us from the competition."

However, advertising is not enough on its own and Fuller's has concentrated on the liquid behind the messages, improving quality in both brewery and pub cellar. "We can talk about quality until the cows come home," he says, "but once it leaves the brewery gates you fundamentally lose control. However, you can influence what happens."

Influencing quality goes right back to the way the beer is made. Fuller's is one of the few brewers that allows part of the secondary fermentation process to take place in brewery vessels rather than casks. This means that the beer is more stable and developed by the time it gets into barrel and leaves the Griffin Brewery.

"We have created a buffer of several days before the beer goes out," says John. "This is more expensive. We need twice as many vessels as comparable brewers because once fermentation is complete we move the beer to a secondary vessel.

"We have been through the entire process from start to finish, eradicating inconsistency, so that we eliminate any chance for something to go wrong.

"But at the same time beer is a living, breathing thing and every batch will be different. So it is the brewer's art to know when to tweak a brew so that what comes out is consistent."

The company recently spent £1.4m on additional fermentation and maturation tanks to increase capacity by 25 per cent. Completion last week on the adjacent £1m Texaco garage site will add a further 11 per cent to the Chiswick plant. The company is proactive out in pub cellars training staff and monitoring equipment and next year it will set about creating a Centre of Excellence at the Griffin Brewery.

There has been no compromise on costs. John says that "every week" it costs more to brew beer as there is no corner-cutting on quality, from the ingredients to the metal pump clips on the bar.

Originally from Wolverhampton, where he grew up on Ansell's Bitter, John says he was fascinated with beer from a young age, collecting beer mats and other ale artifacts. He read economics at Trent Poly in Nottingham where John's passion for real ale flourished aided by the fact that his economics lectures regularly used brewing models to illustrate economic principles - his tutor was one Chris Holmes of Tyne Mill and CAMRA fame.

In his homely Griffin Brewery office, alongside a plethora of marketing bumf, sits a well-fingered copy of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide from 1977 in which a small tick alongside a beer brand illustrates the ones that John has sampled. There are many ticks.

His first marketing role was with the then Allied soft drinks subsidiary, Britvic, where he worked on the various juice products and helped launch Britvic 55