Girlie beers “a mistake”

It was an interesting admission made by SABMiller. At their recent Quarterly Seminar on Africa (9 March 2015), they acknowledged that they did a less effective job when they “overfocused” on women as the primary target group for their flavoured alcoholic beverages. The apple-flavoured beer mix Redd’s is a case in point.

Because they aimed at women in their marketing, this created a rejection by male consumers and drove Redd’s into a niche. The lesson learnt, they said, is that “you need to position a product as sufficiently masculine to ensure that women are interested as well.”

Thank heavens, the penny dropped in the end.