Those of you who have been following the online debate among beer bloggers regarding ethics which was sparked by e-mail many of us received regarding the new Stella Artois website launch will no doubt be intrigued by their latest press release, which was about the website re-launch. In it, they claim that traffic has increased twenty-fold since the re-launch.
Here’s the part I think many of you will find interesting:
Both the mainstream media community as well as the social media internet community have broadly praised the website, developed by Lowe Worldwide under the direction of the Global Stella Artois brand team, and it has been awarded ‘Site of the Week’ status by the FWA.
“The interesting thing is that people are also staying on our site much longer than industry average estimates of 45 seconds,” said Neil Gannon, Global Marketing Manager for Stella Artois. “In fact, the main site attracts a viewing time of four minutes, with many people watching the short La Bouteille film, which also serves as the navigation for the site, for well over five minutes. And 30% of visits to our site are through word of mouth, rather than search engines, which is a really nice compliment,”
Reader reactions on industry blog Ads of the World (which advised readers to put aside at least half an hour to view the site) included “Wonderful! Engaging and entertaining”, whilst “Captivating, original and exciting” was the reaction from Welcome to the Future whose readers gave the site 4.8 out of 5.0. Contagious Magazine called the site an “online epic”, whilst Clare Beale, Editor of industry publication Campaign magazine and contributor to The Independent newspaper in the United Kingdom, called the website “cunning” and “with an entertainment value that means that viewers will spend time on the site and return for more.”
My initial reaction is that it clearly shows how they intended to use the beer blogging community as well as the online community generally. But I’ve been drinking seemingly non-stop in Germany for the last two days, slightly sleep-deprived and wanting desperately to go to sleep so I’m in no condition to give this my usual overthinking. So instead I’ll ask you what you think about this latest press release from Stella Artois and whether or not it has any relevance or effect on our earlier dialogues?
As this has been raised again, can I just say that I never really saw the debate that I sparked off as being about “ethics”.
Indeed I think that attempts to divert it into such a quagmire of meaningless debate had the effect of kicking the whole thing into the long grass.
I just didn’t see why certain bloggers saw fit to do unpaid promotional work for the world’s largest brewer, heaping lavish praise on a marketing campaign for a beer without merit. Add to that the fact that the campaign they were giving a free leg up to is at heart misleading – presenting as it does a portrait of a product with real heritage, when in reality it’s a factory produced ersatz lager.
Can’t we just ignore it, and concentrate on writing about good beer and honest brewers? Why give the oxygen of publicity to this stuff? InBev already has millions to spend on advertising globally – smaller brewers who really do concentrate on quality and tradition don’t.
To back up my comment about the essence of Stella’s ad campaigns being misleading, it will help if I provide this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/sep/19/advertising.business
“The [UK Advertising Standards Authority] has banned premium beer brand Stella Artois from implying in its ad campaigns that one family has been brewing the beer for more than 600 years.”
The ASA ruling only effects on particular ad, but let’s face it: the entire thrust of the campaign is designed to create the impressionthat Stella Artois is some kind of traditional, premium product. It isn’t. In reality, the products that deserve the most praise and attention from beer bloggers don’t come from InBev factories. Unless, of course, slick and expensive ad campaigns are more important to you than malt and hops.
I think I know why their visitor average time is so high– I just loaded the site and after three minutes, their Flash based movie (which automatically loads, I didn’t choose to watch it) still hasn’t loaded.
What an odd approach to branding. Sent out masses of announcements about your new website and then abandon the brand: http://stonch.blogspot.com/2007/11/well-still-call-it-wifebeater.html
I cannot even get their website to render. I think they should have spent more time load testing instead of issuing press statements