Marketing: Getting it right
Getting closer to your customers and attracting new ones will be the key focus of this year's Publican Marketing Conference. Daniel Pearce reports.
We telephone a lot of pubs at The Publican and we get a lot of different answers when people pick up the phone.
From "Yeah?" to "The King's Arms!" to "Good afternoon, this is the King's Head, how may I help you?"
It's the last answer that comes at Caroline Chambers' pub, a Shepherd Neame tenancy in Hythe, Kent. The licensee knows a lot about marketing - she should do, as the pub won the Marketing Pub of the Year award at The Publican Awards in March - and she knows that marketing a pub starts the minute you answer the phone. Or indeed in any situation where you interface with the customer.
Caroline, who worked for years in marketing - for pro-smoking group Forest, among others - says it is the tiny details that count, particularly in the micro-environment of the pub, where it is the impression you give your locals, rather than the national image of your pubco or the beer you sell, which must take priority. From answering the phone to giving away a car in a consumer competition, marketing can take all sorts of guises. The one certainty about marketing in the pub trade, contends Caroline, is that pubcos should be helping their licensees to do more of it.
"It's true that we have one of the most regulated industries in this country - but we just need to get on with running our businesses and attracting more customers," she says.
"Pubcos could use some of the budget they are spending to fight regulations to promote the businesses better. How much money did they spend on fighting the Licensing Act, and how much do they spend on their businesses?
"Marketing is the first thing to go when cuts are made. It should be one of the last, along with legal and HR."
Caroline will be expanding further on these topics at The Publican Marketing Conference in London's Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre later this year.
Marketing on a bigger scale will be discussed at the conference by Roger McKerlie, chairman of marketing consultancy Life Integrated and a founder of Rise Marketing, a company which specialises in drinks and the on-trade and numbers JD Wetherspoon, Glenfiddich and Nottage Hill among its clients.
Under assault from everyone, ranging from politicians and the public health lobby to the growing trend for the big night in, pubs have had a challenging time of late. Roger will set out how the trade can fight back with a cross-industry campaign highlighting the positives about pubs.
Together with a panel of real pub-goers and conference delegates, Roger will discuss the ways in which pubs can come together with strategic marketing that goes beyond window posters and free t-shirts, towards something that's likely to have a deeper effect on consumers. He will attempt to map out a generic marketing campaign which could be used by tenants and pubcos alike.
Other speakers at the conference will include Alison and Richard Smith, who run a bar in Keynsham, Somerset, who will describe how they made the venue smoke-free when they moved in - and boosted trade as a result.
Jean Coussins, chief executive of drinks watchdog The Portman Group, meanwhile and Karl Czinege of The Union Pub Company will describe how business can be boosted by trading responsibly. Social responsibility is not just in the trade's long-term interest, but is good for business in the short term too, the pair will explain.
Despite the British Beer & Pub Assocation's recent launch of a code of conduct on responsible promotions, it is all too evident that some pub companies and licensees have still to be fully convinced of the business case for trading and promoting alcohol in a responsible way. Using some examples of best practice from across the industry, and highlighting some of The Portman Group's own initiatives, Ms Coussins will seek to convince them otherwise.
- Another high-profile speaker is due to join the conference line-up later this week - watch thePublican.com for details.
Find out more
For further details on The Publican Marketing Conference, which takes place on November 3, contact conference director Michelle Hams on 020 8565 4399, email choyvpnapbasrerapr@gurchoyvpna.pbz, or visit www.thepublican.com/events/thepublican_conference.
