Wednesday’s ad is for the Scottish lager Tennent’s. Given the bottle, I’m guessing this is an old ad, maybe late 19th century. With the two dogs, the tagline “Give us your business & we’ll hold it” is pretty funny.
Drinking Less, Hurting More
British beer writer Phil Mellows, who also specializes in alcohol policy, had an interesting observation in a recent post, Alcohol Consumption Down, Alcohol Harm Up. In his native England, as is happening here, overall alcohol consumption has been on a slow but steady decline for a number of years. The problems associated with alcohol abuse, however, have not. Yet the policies here and there are based on the anti-alcohol organizations and “the medical profession who say that to reduce alcohol harm we have to reduce overall consumption, [which is] the logic behind raising the price of alcohol and restricting its availability.” That’s also one of the reasons that these same people keep trying to impose more and more taxes on alcohol. Yet it’s not working. It’s never worked. Phil concludes by trying to make sense of it.
Rather than trying to get the whole population to drink less (which they are, in any case, already doing), alcohol policy should be focused on the growing minority of people, more stressed even than [the prime minister], who are quietly drinking themselves to death out of despair.
And that’s been the problem with alcohol policy here, too. They keep trying to punish the industry and the majority of people who drink it responsibly in order to stop the problem drinkers. It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It ignores the underlying causes of alcohol abuse. The people who don’t abuse it and in fact enjoy it in moderation — which is a healthy choice — are the ones who pay the price. It’s frustrating. It’s ineffective. It ignores the real problems and punishes the innocent, not to mention it may damage one of the few healthy industries in the economy. But it keeps on happening. Someone has to say enough. I’m happy to start. Enough, already.
Beer In Ads #184: Barclay’s Lager, Light Or Dark
Tuesday’s ad is for the London brand Barclay’s Lager. Getty Images claims it’s from around 1900 but the artist, Tom Purvis, was born in 1888 meaning he’d have been 12 then, so it seems more likely it was actually later. The ad reminds me a bit of the Blues Brothers movie, the scene at the bar where the bartenders tells the band they have both kinds of music, country and western. They serve both kinds of lager, “Light or Dark.”
SABMiller May Buy Foster’s
London’s Sunday Times is giving credence to the rumors and is reporting that SABMiller is seriously considering buying Carlton & United Breweries from the Foster’s Group, the makers of Foster’s, for $10.9 billion.
Earlier this year the Foster’s Group announced that next year that they would split their wine and beer divisions, and rumors began of potential buyers. Since SABMiller already owns the rights to Foster’s in the U.S. and India, speculation naturally centered on them, and now it looks likely they will make a bid for it. This would also give SABMiller Australia’s best-selling beer, Victoria Bitter, and a stronger presence throughout southeast Asia.
Guinness Ad #32: The 1953 Coronation
Our 32nd Guinness poster by John Gilroy was a one-off for a specific event, the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
The zookeeper is shown holding up a bench — presumably made possible from drinking a Guinness — with four of the animals used in various Guinness ads over the years, all waving British flags. There’s no text at all, but I assume everyone would have understood it at the time.
Head to Head Video: U.S. Versus U.K. Beer
Marketwatch recently had a fun little video from the Great British Beer Festival about “U.S. independent beer brewers outpac[ing] their U.K. cousins and gain[ing] market share.” Interviewed in the video are UK beer writer Pete brown and also Bob Pease, COO of the Brewers Association.
Eating Seasonably
Two years ago for one of our Sessions, I lamented that many of the traditionally seasonal beers are now available year-round. That was Session 17, and it’s theme was Drinking Anti-Seasonally, where I wrote:
We live in a time when seasonality has lost its meaning, and not just with respect to beer. Any fruit, regardless of its growing season is available at the average supermarket, flown from around the world so that our every whim not go unfulfilled. Let no sales opportunity go to waste. Convenience is king. As consumers we believe that whatever we want should be available whenever we want it, because that’s the bill of goods we’ve been sold. Remember those bothersome watermelon seeds. Gone. Strawberries in the winter? Thank you Guatemala. We don’t like to wait for anything anymore. And usually we don’t have to, because there’s someone willing to sell us whatever we fancy, regardless of the season.
But if you’re like me, you can decide to choose your foods according to the seasons and an English website, Eat Seasonably, has a great interactive calendar to help you do just that.
From the calendar itself, you can choose to either see when a particular fruit or vegetable is in season, or you can choose a particular month, such as the current month, July.
Around the outer ring, it shows what’s best for that month, which in July’s case is cucumbers, curly lettuce and cherries. The inner ring then shows what else is in season throughout the month.
The chart is also divided up and color-coded by season. They also have various sizes of posters that can be downloaded and printed out. The posters also include a handy chart that lists common fruits and vegetables and then using the color-coding shows which months each one is in season.
It’s a pretty cool little chart, and until we get the beer seasons figured out better, at least we can eat with the seasons.
What (Pete) Brown Can Do For You
Okay, I’m just having a bit of fun with UPS’ slogan and Pete Brown, UK beer writer. But today Pete has a nice overview of each of the big six beer companies that do business in the UK, entitled The Big Boys. It’s definitely worth a read. He talks primarily about their marketing efforts in the UK, but you get a sense of how he feels about the pros and cons of each company and the overall feeling that they’re not all the same.
Two Possible Buyers Emerge In Bass Sale
The UK’s Publican recently included a report from the Scotsman regarding the emergence of the two likeliest candidates to buy Bass from ABI.
A North American brewing giant and small regional UK brewer have emerged as the front-runners to buy beer brand Bass in this country .It is believed brewing major Molson Coors and Well’s & Young’s, based in Bedford in England, are favourites to land Bass as current owner Anheuser-Busch Inbev is understood to be considering a sale to want to focus instead on its premium lager portfolio, which includes Stella Artois, Beck’s and Budweiser. It declined to comment on what it called “market speculation” about a potential sale.
Let’s see how this plays out.
Beer In Ads #136: Phipps’ Pale Ale
Thursday’s ad is another old one that shows off the brewery with industrial glee. It’s for a British beer, Phipps’ from Northampton. They’re actually still in business under the name Phipps’ NBC (or Northampton Brewing Co.), having been revived in 2004. There’s a nice detailed history online, too. But it’s a beautiful poster, with both the brewery in the center and the surrounding scrolling, especially the hop vines. It’s like a rectangular coat of arms.
