There’s already been much written in this magazine about the new Let There Be Beer (LTBB) campaign — pretty much all of it varying from cautious to outright approval. Recently the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA’s) chief executive Mike Benner gave it wholehearted support.
While the high-profile launch TV ad looks like it could be for any of the leading lager brands that co-funded the ad, CAMRA’s leadership, along with that of most other industry bodies, sees that a campaign for all beer — if successful — will benefit mainstream lager, real ale and craft beer alike.
Behind the scenes and out in the beer blogosphere, reaction has been less positive. I blogged about the pros and cons of the campaign launch, and many of the comments in re-sponse were dismissive of big brewers wanting to sell more big lager.
Despite my reservations, I think this is unfair. While the launch ad had its flaws, I can’t fault the thinking behind it, and I’ve since been assured by those behind the campaign that there’s much more to come. More reassuringly, these people have been very open to criticism, showing a genuine interest in canvassing as many different views from the beer world as possible.
Despite it being the big boys putting the money in, they genuinely do want to represent all beer. We showed with the beer-duty escalator campaign that, if people get involved instead of sniping from the sidelines, we can achieve genuine change.
The ‘enemy’ in this campaign is, of course, harder to pin down than a straightforward Treasury policy.
Faustian pact
Beer has an image problem. Some of the blame for this rests at the industry’s own door, and some doesn’t. Beer is seen as boorish and macho — only 15% of beer volume in the UK is consumed by women. Forty years and hundreds of millions of pounds of advertising depicting beer as macho and laddish has backfired in a more metrosexual age, when a bloke can enjoy a glass of wine without having his sexuality called into question. (In Spain, women account for 40% of beer volume — it’s not beer that women don’t like, but its cultural stereotype).
Beer is also now seen as downmarket and commoditised — something the Faustian pact between brewers and supermarkets has fuelled to the point where many drinkers don’t see why they should ever pay full re-tail price for beer that’s almost always on promotion — and always much cheaper in supermarkets than pubs.
Beer is seen as fattening, gassy, and the scapegoat for problem drinking. Local councils talk of banning ‘high-strength alcohol’ when referring to beers of 7% ABV — half the strength of wine, which is a nice drink that nice people enjoy and never get drunk on. Our media talks of ‘lager louts’ with ‘beer bellies’ when writing about the antics of young people smashed on cheap shots and slammers and bloated on junk food.
Just last month, The Observer ran a scare story about the perils of binge-drinking among the over-65s. The whole piece was based around a woman who drank a bottle of wine a day. The accompanying picture was of a man with a pint of real ale.
Simple joys
I’ve written before about the need to campaign against such misrepresentations. We’re good at campaigning — almost too good sometimes. We’re so practised in lecturing people on the virtues of cask ale or warning them that they’d better use their pub more or they’ll have it taken away from them, we sometimes lose sight of the simple joys of a good pint down the local.
If beer and pubs are so good, then shouldn’t the great times sell themselves?
This is what the LTBB ad gets absolutely right. Over my years in beer advertising, I identified seven classic tropes of beer ads around the world — LTBB dramatises three of them: beer as a hard-earned reward after work; beer as a source of tingling refreshment; and beer as a catalyst to creating social bonds.
Whenever I ask people what the best beer they ever had was, they can tell me everything about the moment and who they were with, but often very little about the beer itself. And that’s fine — beer is the catalyst for many of the best moments in our lives. Somehow, in a world that demonises drink, seeks to put a monetary price on everything and promotes work as our sole reason for existence, many people have forgotten this.
It’s a damn shame that we need a multi-million-pound TV ad to remind us how to enjoy ourselves, and there’s a lot more work to do to get the campaign absolutely right.
But as a reminder to celebrate beer, rather than simply get angry on its behalf, I’m all for it.