Generic beer campaign rapped for breaking alcohol rules
Hopefully, supporters of generic beer campaigns take the ruling by the UK’s advertising watchdog to heart. In December 2013 it ruled that a TV ad for brewing industry marketing campaign “Let There Be Beer” cannot be shown again in its current form.
The Grocer, a trade magazine, wrote that the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) ruling is the latest blow for the generic campaign, which is funded by five major brewers (Heineken, AB-InBev, Carlsberg, SABMiller and Molson Coors), and has come under fire since it was launched in the summer of 2013 to boost the performance of the ailing beer category.
The ad was first broadcast at the end of June 2013, just before British Beer & Pub Association figures showed total volume sales of beer had fallen to their lowest level since 1999.
The campaign organisers, the Coalition of UK Brewers, have been told the ad cannot be screened again after the ASA upheld a four-point complaint by the Youth Alcohol Advertising Council that the ad implied alcohol could contribute to an individual’s popularity; implied drinking alcohol was a key component of social success; portrayed alcohol as indispensable and that drinking could overcome problems; and implied alcohol had therapeutic qualities.
As if the ASA’s ruling was not enough, the “Let There Be Beer” campaign has also come in for criticism from marketing experts who suggested the TV ad was “preaching to the converted” and was unlikely to bring new consumers to the category. Meanwhile bloggers have derided it for being too focused on the major brewers’ brands.
One criticism sums up the anti-campaign mood quite well. Robert Metcalfe, MD, Richmond Towers, commented on The Grocer’s website, saying: “There is a long tradition of generic beer ads in the UK dating back to the Brewers’ Society’s ‘Beer is Best’ campaign from the 1930s, executed with wit, style and flair. Everything, in fact, that is lacking from this offering. We have been served a second-rate lager ad, but without the brand showing. It could have been screened at any time in the past ten years. For this reason alone, the idea that it will change anyone’s drinking habits is daft. Refreshment and social lubrication are the two standbys of lager advertising and are presented here yet again as the only reasons to drink beer. This was supposed to ‘reinvent the image of the sector’? Come off it.”
We wonder what the Brits will say when they see the motifs from the Brewers of Europe’s advertising campaign “Love beer”…
