Foster’s is one of three beer brands (there really aren’t any more than that) that I flatly refuse to drink. I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s tasteless — it’s worse than that — to me it has an unpleasant flavour.
I don’t understand how anyone could or would want to create something that is so seemingly bland, but leaves such an unpleasant after-taste building remorselessly in your mouth.
I know a lot of people who drink Foster’s. Most of them drink it with lime or a lemonade top, because they think they don’t like the taste of beer.
I try to tell them no — they just don’t like the taste of Foster’s. But they don’t listen. They carry on drinking a beer they actually find unpleasant without adulteration.
Why? Because while they may not like the beer, they bloody love the brand.
A big way in which I differ from many fellow beer writers is that I’m actually a huge fan of large-scale beer marketing.
When people say: “Aargh! It’s a triumph of style over substance! No more than flashy presentation,” I want to reply: “Yeah, it’s good, isn’t it?”
Not all the time, and far less often than I did, but often.
If it wasn’t for my job helping to make glossy beer adverts, I would never have staggered into beer writing. Perhaps this adds another entry to your own list of ‘Reasons I really hate beer adverts’, but from my point of view, it was a blessing.
Even though I’ve seen it from the inside — and like laws and sausages, you really don’t want to watch it being made — I’m a sucker for great marketing.
The first time I saw a Magners poured over ice, I knew it would be huge, and wanted one myself. My early beer choices were shaped by funny ads.
And when I worked on Stella Artois, I genuinely believed it was a premium quality lager. No wait, come back. It was once.
I never really loved Foster’s because, until I went there, I never really went for the whole Australian thing. But the current association with comedy has changed that. I still couldn’t drink the beer, but I’ve swallowed the marketing.
Back in the day I used to try to persuade Heineken (the old, 3.4% ABV cooking lager version) that it should link up with comedy. At the time everyone else
was putting all their money behind sport, and it would make the brand stand out. Comedy also seemed like the very essence of a good night’s drinking — from pub banter, to ‘man walks into a pub’ jokes, to actual stand-up in rooms above pubs all across the country.
A decade later, the media landscape is very different, and Foster’s has ‘done’ comedy in a much more interesting way. It could have just hung around with funny people, draping the name on comedy gigs and programmes.
And yes, there are the idents around TV comedy shows — how could there not be?
But beyond that, Foster’s is championing original comedy that wouldn’t exist without it.
If you go to www.fosters.co.uk, you can watch new material, unavailable anywhere else, from Alan Partridge, Vic and Bob, and now my favourite — The Fast Show. Each of these is as good as it ever was.
If anyone gives you something new, something good, for free, you’re going to think better of them. And I genuinely do.
But there’s just one thing that strikes me — not a criticism, but an observation.
Throughout my time as a lager ad man, the target audience was 18 to 34-year-olds. I was smack in the middle of this audience when the above acts were the funniest thing on television. But I’m in my early 40s now — as is any other hard-core fan of The Fast Show.
While this Foster’s association with comedy feels new and fresh, breaks new ground with use of digital media, is genuinely funny and therefore highly rewarding, it is also a tacit admission that the core market for mainstream standard lager is growing old.
That begs the question: what do the multinationals believe today’s 18 to 34-year-olds are drinking?
An indication of big changes in the nation’s drinking habits?
Suits you, sir.