Saturday’s ad is for Worthington’s White Shield. It looks fairly old, but I can’t be sure; my guess is later 19th century or fairly early in the 20th. It must have been shortly after they’d started bottling the beer, since that’s the focus of the ad.
Friday’s ad is a third one for Wells Bombardier, from 2009. So this one’s not exactly old, but as I love heraldry, it has a retro feel to it. It’s the third of three ads that Kindred did for Wells & Young in an attempt to link the Bombardier beer with English pride and nationalism. I love the detail in the faux coat of arms. Everywhere you look, there are symbols of England, or at least things that might remind one of Great Britain.
Thursday’s ad is a second one for Wells Bombardier, from 2009. So this one’s not exactly old, but as I love heraldry, it has a retro feel to it. It’s the second of three ads that Kindred did for Wells & Young in an attempt to link the Bombardier beer with English pride and nationalism. I love the detail in the faux coat of arms. Everywhere you look, there are symbols of England, or at least things that might remind one of Great Britain.
Wednesday’s ad is for Wells Bombardier, from 2009. So this one’s not exactly old, but as I love heraldry, it has a retro feel to it. It’s the first of three ads that Kindred did for Wells & Young in an attempt to link the Bombardier beer with English pride and nationalism. I love the detail in the faux coat of arms. Everywhere you look, there are symbols of England, or at least things that might remind one of Great Britain.
Tuesday’s ad is another one for the English beer Double Diamond Burton Pale Ale, also from 1954. Part of a series called “Inn-Sign Rhymes,” this one shows the iconic Double Diamond dude toasting a sign for “The George & Dragon” pub. Below the illustration is the rhyme of the series and the tagline “A Double Diamond works wonders.”
Monday’s ad is for the English beer Double Diamond Burton Pale Ale, from 1954. Part of a series called “Inn-Sign Rhymes,” this one shows the iconic Double Diamond dude toasting a sign for “The Robin Hood” pub. Below the illustration is the rhyme of the series and the tagline “A Double Diamond works wonders.”
Today’s beer video is twofer in honor of the big game that’s being played later today. It’s a pair of non-ad ads created by Newcastle Brown Ale that were never meant to be aired during the way-too-expensive football game. They’re part of a series of non-ads under the umbrella title if we made it that poke fun at the bombast of the game and all of the hype surrounding it. The first one is Anna Kendrick: Behind the Scenes of the Mega Huge Game Day Ad Newcastle Almost Made.
The second one, The Mega Huge Football Game Ad Newcastle Could’ve Made, is a storyboard for an ad that was clearly too expensive not only for Newcastle but possibly for anyone to make, even for an event so mythically big as the Super Bowl.
The whole series is actually pretty funny. Take a look at some of the others at if we made it.
Given that craft beer on this side of the pond has seen double-digit growth almost every year for over ten years, the news that sales of beer in Great Britain has shown positive growth in two consecutive quarters may not not seem like something that’s newsworthy. But this is the first time it’s happened in more than ten years, as pub closures and other factors have had troubling consequences for British beer. The latest figures, released by the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), show total beer sales up 0.8% in the 4th quarter of 2013, with off-trade (primarily retail) up 3.9%, although pub sales were down 2.2%.
The Morning Advertiser article also mentions the announcement concurrently that Marston’s will build a new £7 million bottling plant, which the BBPA believes translates to increased confidence on the part of British brewers. The credit for all this good news is thought to be the decision by the UK government’s Chancellor to “cut [the] Beer Duty in last year’s Budget,” meaning lower taxes on breweries. According to the BBPA’s Chief Executive, Brigid Simmonds. “These figures demonstrate that cutting beer duty helps increase beer sales, stimulates industry investment and saves jobs. We hope the Chancellor takes note and freezes beer duty in his next Budget to give a further boost to British beer and pubs.”
This is important on our side of the world because there are currently two bills before Congress with the same goal, to lower the excise tax of beer to stimulate our economy and create jobs in the brewing industry and related support industries here, too. That it appears to have worked in Great Britain is a promising development that may make it more attractive to legislators in justifying the tax cut.
Here’s a pretty cool historical artifact, from the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale. It’s a print that was created in 1808 by London publisher Thomas Tegg. It’s printed on woven paper, an “etching with stipple” and is hand-colored. The “plate mark is 25 x 35.2 cm.,” on a sheet of paper 27 x 28 cm, and the plate is numbered 151 in the upper righthand corner. When new it sold for one shilling, but I’m guessing it goes for a bit more now. It’s title is “Sir John Barleycorn — Miss Hop — (and their only child) — Master Porter” and is further “dedicated to the publicans of London.” Ah, they had a baby and named it Porter, too. Small world.
Friday’s ad is for Whitbread, from 1965. It seems to be a play on “what the butler saw, ” instead it’s “What the Duchess Saw,” through the keyhole, which is in fact the butler pouring himself a bottle of the Duke’s Whitbread beer. He sure looks happy, doesn’t he? Hopefully he’s off the clock.
