When lager advertising gave Samantha one

The Skol lager ad with the immortal last line. Watch to the end -  it’ s a cracker. It also was a landmark campaign for lager, according to the agency that made it – D’Arcy Macmanus & Masius.

Why was it different? Because it was among the first mass-advertised lagers to focus on the context of the drink rather than the product quality.

For young men, the core target market, taste was not their real motivation for drinking lager; what mattered to them was the sociability and conviviality involved in drinking. This was the opportunity. The Skolars campaign, “When you know lager, you’re a Skolar” expressed all emotional motivations for drinking lager and indissolvably linked them to Skol.

Within two years Skol’s previously declining market share had been restored to the position it held in the mid seventies. This despite the interruptions to supply caused by industrial disputes.

Neither product quality, nor price relative to other standard lagers had changed and distribution had in fact declined. Thus of all the marketing factors that could conceivably have influenced the brand’s market share only advertising could have been responsible for the gains achieved in the last two years.

IPA Effectiveness Awards, 1982

The agency of course was being slightly disingenuous. Happy, convivial drinkers had been part and parcel of beer advertising since the start of beer advertising. But the difference with the 1978 ‘When you know lager, you’re a Skolar’ ads was that the drinkers weren’t happy as a direct result of the beer’s own characteristics, but because of the social context they were served in.

In other words it was part of the long farewell to claims of “Refreshment” and being “Probably the best” and towards such dubious practices as ‘Following the bear’ and making a ‘sHarp exit’.

Posted in Advertising, Brands, Lager | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Lager vs. cask. Why can’t we all just get along?

News of an interesting event in London

A top level exploration of that perennial beer drinkers’ conundrum as to whether cask ale and real lager are friends or foes is to be made by leading UK beer writers Roger Protz and Pete Brown as part of the White Horse, Parsons Green programme for National Cask Ale Week (March 29-April 5).

The event takes place on Tuesday March 30th at 7pm, when participants will also be treated to a tutorial on some of the cask ales in the White Horse’s cask ale week programme as well as on Budweiser Budvar’s fabled non-pasteurised yeast beer. Usually only found at the Budvar brewery tap or at a very few selected outlets, all in the Czech Republic, White Horse manager Dan Fox has arranged to list this, what many believe is the ultimate lager, especially for the week.

Both Protz and Brown promise to challenge the received wisdom that sees the beer globe as having lager at one pole and cask ale at the other and they propose to offer an alternative map to the beer world.

Posted in Beer, Lager | 3 Comments

Carl Jacobsen’s lager project

From The Scotsman, February 1870. Showing that Carlsberg was not only exported to Scotland, it was also sold there.

That old man Jacobsen wasn’t too enamoured of his son’s ideas of importing lager beer to Great Britain is clear to see from the letters he sent to Carl while Jacobsen the younger was on his four-year stint around the brewing capitals of Europe.

With the attitude of ‘I’m sure you’ll grow out of it’ he referred to Carl’s plans to sell his beer as The Project, but seemed more pleased by his son’s embracing of the commercial skills he lacked. That didn’t mean he took him seriously, though 

But Carl had something. By March 1869, Theilmann had ordered another six barrels (Jacobsen only sent him three) and asked for more, for another distributor, Russell, but Jacobsen only had 15 available . Russell was also certain that Carlsberg Beer would sell and reckoned that he could easily sell the  2,200 barrels brewed for the following season . Theilmann even went so far as to suggest that Carlsberg Beer would be able to compete on the home market with Bass and Allsop’s Ales and Messrs. W&J Russell of Leith backed him up ordering first 50 and then a further 100 barrels.

By this stage it seems that even Jacobsen was beginning to believe in The Project and the sale of his beer in Great Britain - although only as much as he believed would sell and only at the quality (and maturity) he thought was suitable. He remarked in one of his letters of the alarming trend of delivering “half-matured” lager all year round.

 He did, though, draw the line of selling his beer in a “shop” in London. Far too awful to contemplate.

Posted in Beer, Brewing history, Carlsberg, Lager, UK lager | Comments Off