Stephen Gould of Leicestershire-based Everards told the Tenanted Pub Company Summit that he was inspired by a speech from the chief executive of a beer trade body in Spain about a campaign that ran there.
Gould, who also chairs the Futures Committee at the British Beer & Pub Association, said: “What he said was, 14 years ago we decided we’d had enough of beer being poorly labelled, beer being seen as just pure alcohol, and we were effectively seeing our sales dropping.
“So they focused in on a unified campaign around beer and they stuck to it for 14 years. If you look at the Spanish beer market, the beer volumes are actually [increasing] in the past 10 years, and his view was it was to do with focusing in on one single campaign.”
Gould said he didn’t want to replicate the Spanish approach exactly, but said: “Wouldn’t it be great if there could be one campaign for beer and pubs? My proposal is that should very much focus in on job creation. [It would have] a very decent chance of success, I think.”
He said the trade should call for “economic incentives” to encourage growth, in the way Progressive Beer Duty stimulated growth among small breweries, rather than argue for “passive tax cuts”.
He agreed that a VAT cut for the sector could be one economic incentive that would help the industry create jobs.
The industry can be a “little bit clumsy sometimes”, Gould said, when presenting to Government.
He said it’s “all very whizzy” for bosses of FTSE 100 companies to make their case, but using more grassroots licensees and pub operators “might deliver a little more traction”.
“We should give a very powerful message that this is an industry to back and to incentivise and to grow further.”
Gould pointed out that while Starbucks won praise from David Cameron for saying it would create 5,000 jobs over the next five years, Wetherspoons alone said it created 3,000 just in 2011. Pubs as a whole employ 600,000 people directly, he stressed