Rising star

Ale brands are behaving more like lagers and upping the ante on the the marketing front. Nigel Huddleston reports

Just when it seemed that ale brewers were resigned to a future as bit-part players in a market where big lager brands grabbed all the main roles, they've decided to come out fighting.

Apart from John Smith's, which has received consistent heavyweight support for the last decade, it seemed that ale marketing departments were short on ideas and inspiration.

But with brands such as Greene King IPA, Marston's Pedigree and Bombardier signing up to sports sponsorships and prime-time TV deals, it seems that ale brands are taking the fight against lager into its own territory.

In its biggest-ever deal, Greene King has signed a four-year contract to sponsor the England rugby union team. Marketing director Fiona Hope says: "We're looking to marketing traditionally used by lager. It's about locking into consumers' interests and helping them make emotional connections with our brands. It's also about enabling people to have a more memorable experience of our beers."

Achieving goals

Marston's has hooked into the nation's love of cricket by becoming the official beer of the England team. Last week it also signed a deal to supply beer at English test-match grounds.

The three-year agreement includes exclusive beer rights to perimeter branding, tri-vision boards behind the wicket and poster sites at international cricket fixtures until the end of the 2009 cricket season.

Welsh brewer SA Brain is another company that has been tapping into sport to try to reach more consumers. After starting relatively small with Glamorgan county cricket and Cardiff rugby clubs, it has progressed to become official sponsor of the Welsh national rugby team.

Sales and marketing director Richard Davies says: "For us, the clear benefit of stepping up from local to national rugby is that we get the opportunity to build the Brains brand across Wales. But a link with the Welsh rugby team is easy to market in Wales, while it's not so simple across the border."

To achieve this, Brains has aimed to use new product development, tailoring its SA Gold specifically for the English market.

"It is hoppier and lighter in colour and has a stronger abv at 4.7%, which is more suited to the English palate than 4.2%," says Davies.

Brains has also used new products to target a younger profile within the Welsh market. Its 45 brand is being positioned as "continental-style Welsh beer". Significantly, it has gone down the lager-marketing route with a deal to become official beer of the Welsh Football Association, despite still being in its infancy as a brand.

"With examples such as Greene King's in-volvement in English rugby and Bombardier's sponsorship of Al Murray on ITV, there is clear evidence that ale producers are bundling activity into sport and TV sponsorship," says Davies. "Rugby works well for cask ale because it tends to be a relatively upmarket sport."

Competing with the big boys

But while several brands have been splashing the cash, for many regional-ale brewers the opportunities to compete head-on with lager are constrained by budgets. Apart from John Smith's, other ales owned by majors have seen marketing budgets eroded in recent years, while smaller regional brands don't have the sales volume to justify marketing budgets anywhere near those of the big lager brands.

Wadworth sales director Fred West says: "Some of those ale brands probably see themselves as more mainstream than we are with 6X. We've had a little involvement in sports and music sponsorship at a very local level.

"We see ourselves as a local brand with a national reputation, while some of those probably see themselves as national brands - if you want to compete with them, you have to compete in lager territory."

S&NUK arguably has the biggest sports sponsorship of all in the form of the Grand National, but Shaun Heyes, head of category marketing for the regions, says links with rugby are nothing new.

"Ale and rugby have always gone together - many years go we had the Courage Club Championship. What has been different is that some regional brewers are trying to tap into vehicles that have natural links with ale, but also drive trade into their pubs.

"The Grand National's sheer scale is attractive. Everything stops on Grand National Day, so it was just an amazing opportunity."

Style and delivery

As the Brains experience shows, it's not just in the way marketing cash is spent that ale is learning from lager - brewers are also reassessing the style and delivery of product that's put in front of consumers.

Rob Borland, Coors Brewers director of marketing for portfolio brands, says that

Caffrey's, the once-lauded "hybrid ale", has seen a resurgence in regional pockets, due to a focus on reduced serving temperatures, mirroring the extra-cold phenomenon in lager.

He says: "When we apply some of the cold-beer aspects of lager to ale brands, they respond quite well. It makes ale more drinkable for the greater number of people who have become used to drinking lager these days."

S&NUK head of category marketing for the regions Shaun Heyes agrees. "We're seeing interest in colder ale variants across both cask and keg. Many regional brewers are investing in delivering cooler cask ales. They're not just targeting core ale consumers, but the younger market the ale category needs to engage."

Greene King's Fiona Hope says ale brewers should be more ambitious about how they reach new types of consumer.

She cites Madonna's (accidental) endorsement of Timothy Taylor's Landlord several years ago as the type of publicity that could provide a leap forward in cask ale's fortunes.

Greene King is trying to muscle in on New York celebrity parties with its Old Speckled Hen brand, which is making small but significant waves on the US east-coast market.

Hope adds: "We can learn key lessons from the wine industry. The New World wine explosion came because the industry made wine accessible with good brands and marketing, but retained a sense of wine's mystique. We need to do more, and make real beer sexy.

"Cask ale is challenging to look after, but it's the world's best drink when we do it well."