Former Foster’s marketing guru Bruce Siney explains why Foster’s went flat and why VB’s ‘Hard earned thirst’ should make a comeback
September 24 2011, 9:30 pm | | 16 Comments
Bruce Siney, the former marketing director of Foster’s, is profiled in today’s Weekend Australian in the wake of SABMiller’s agreed $12.3 billion bid this week for Foster’s.
For two decades from the early 1970s, Siney plotted and executed the international expansion of Foster’s beer.
Reports the Australian: When he stepped down as marketing director in 1993, Victoria Bitter commanded almost 40 per cent of the national packaged beer market and remained unassailable for some time after that. But VB is now unrecognisable. Despite being available on tap as well, its market share has shrunk to a miserable 14 per cent. READ THE STORY
16 Comments
Sometimes its hard to make an icon campaign that’s been running for years work in todays market place.
It takes true talent.
Unfortunately it:s easier for everyone to say lets start again.
Australia is loosing its true campaigns and being replaced with shallow thinking.
Naff off Andy – or go play with John D on the coast of Portugal or wherever he is worshipping himself
And Andy it’s also losing it’s ability to spell. Both are tragic.
The latest campaign for VB is off target.
Every beer requires a ‘partnership’ with ice to function properly.
The current VB brand custodians need to step over their pride and go back to the original VHS tapes and study what made VB advertising ‘iconic’ with it’s target audience.
I think they’ll find that the ‘formula’ was actually quite simple.
Well, some people aren’t that great at beer advertising, others are. I’ll be the first to admit I’m shit at it, it’s a lot harder than people realise.
The real problem here is the product hasn’t changed and the target has, thanks to the internet, “imported” beers being brewed locally (and becoming cheaper) and peoples taste-buds evolving.
I still remember only 10 years ago you were a VB man and worked with your hands or a Tooheys man and worked with your brain. Both positioning’s have disappeared completely, and when they did they both lost out.
Times have moved on… A hard earned thirst is quenched by a Corona or a Hahn Super Dry these days just as well…
AK is correct in the sense that times have moved on. The beer market has changed enormously from the halcyon days when there was far less choice and VB was an easy and natural call. It’s way more fragmented than that.
However it’s correct to say that VB should be getting back to its core values. I’ve been banging on about this under various nom-de-plumes for years – the task of reviving VB is not as terrifying as starting with a blank piece of paper.
Whoever handles the account, whether it’s Droga5 or anyone else, instinct and commonsense tells you to make ‘a hard-earned thirst’ relevant to today. Any seasoned professional should be able to do it. I’d even give D5 one more crack at it. One more, and that’s it.
AK is not, however, correct when he says that a hard-earded thirst is quenched by a Corona, which, with its poofy wedge of lemon stuck in the neck of the bottle and weak flavour isn’t fit for human consumption and would rightly be refused by a man dying of thirst in a desert.
The trouble is, hardly anyone earns their thirst in this country anymore.
We’ve all gone soft. Manufacturing jobs have gone, tradies earn so much coin that they can afford to drink premium beer (let’s be honest, VB doesn’t taste as good as the more expensive stuff), and the rest of us are earning a living sitting on our arses.
Old CD Guy, these people who’d refuse a Corona… they’re dying off. Hardly anyone outside of the Bathurst crowd thinks lemon-wedge light tasting beers to be poofy.
I don’t disagree with trying to contemporise hard earned thirst. But I think it’s a harder challenge than many would think.
Maybe, perhaps… the Australian beer drinker has wised up, and realised that of the dozens and dozens of choices in front of him, VB (taste-wise) is one of the worst. Sure it’s cheap. But how many blokes don’t have an extra 10 bucks a slab to spend on their beer? Not many I’d say.
People want premium experiences, especially if they can have them without it costing them too much more. Beer now is one of those categories where you can (god I hate this pretend word) premiumise your experience for a small price penalty.
I reckon VB now has to be resigned to never being a successful mass brand again. Given its heritage, it’s taste profile and its appeal, it’s got large niche written all over it.
Not much point SAB Miller having Carlton Draught AND VB competing against each other in the same market for essentially the same positioning, which they’ve stupidly done over the last 5 years.
Keep Carlton Draught as the mainstream hero, and have VB as your earthier big-niche brand, kinda the anti-Corona.
Because unless society regresses, I really can’t see Hard Earned Thirst being a mainstream proposition for beer anymore. Certainly not to the extent it used to be.
If the Hard Earned Thirst strategy was working then George Patts wouldn’t have moved away from it. But the fact is sales were going down.
Maybe it wasn’t the strategy, but the execution.
This is a really intelligent debate. My 2 cans would be:
• While mainstream beers have dropped in consumption, wine and premium beers have risen. Telling someone they’re a poof for drinking something refined doesn’t cut it anymore, at least in the people-with-teeth brigade.
• VB, both taste-wise and brand-wise doesn’t stand for a fucking thing. It kind of had a positioning before but research jerked it around so much it’s a mess. KB and Resches have more personality and that’s your grandpa’s beer that hasn’t advertised for aeons.
So while that puts reviving hard earned thirst into question, the bigger question is the balls to put a stick in the sand and make a positioning or a statement that’s going to last beyond next year, whatever that statement is.
Fuck I wish I worked at Droga, there’s a lot you could do with this brand and they’re prepared to sink shitloads of money into it… grrrrr,
Many people have discovered the world of craft beer so that has had a huge impact into market share.
God, some people really have no idea about advertising. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be doing our beer ads. It’s almost as if the campaigns are written by people who hate the beers they’re doing ads for; they certainly have no respect for the people who drink those beers.
The VB strategy would work as well today as it did when it was first created 50 years ago. The strategy is not the problem, it’s the amazingly bad ads that never, ever live up to the strategy. Of course VB could never maintain that amazingly high market share – no brand could. But that doesn’t mean you need to go out and destroy the brand entirely. And that’s what’s been happening.
i thought I’d seen the worst VB ad of my life when the Beer Wimps spot came out last year, but the VB meets Ice ad comes a close second.
Wow, what pure genius. I mean, who ever would have thought of using ice to make VB cold. Amazing. Because I’ll bet it tastes better cold – something else I’d never have thought of if I hadn’t seen this ad. Brilliant stuff. I’ll bet in no time all the other beer brands will be copying this unique idea and suggesting their beer should be drank cold as well. But it was those geniuses doing the VB ads who thought of it first.
All I can say is, thank God the brewery is being sold. First job of the new owners: sack the entire marketing department. Second job: sack all existing agencies.
Just a few things worth considering.
1] Bruce Siney is Australia’s third biggest beer marketer. That’s the third biggest today, not yesterday, today; so his comments aren’t those of someone living in the past.
2] The Hard Earned strategy is as relevant today as its ever been.
3] The demise of the blue collar worker is irrelevant. Recognition and reward regardless of what you do is still a powerful motivator. If you don’t understand that, then you’re in the wrong business.
4] The ads over the last few years have been abysmal.
5] It’s time the brand’s marketing, both at client and agency level, was handed over to grown-ups.
Exactly right, Another Old Guy, on all points.
Point three, regarding the irrelevance of the demise of blue collar workers, is particularly worth expanding on.
Yes, VB always focused (though not exclusively) on blue collar workers, but it was bought by everyone. The blue collar workers gave the beer credibility – something that has been destroyed in just a few short years by some of the dumbest advertising in Australian history.
Sadly, the decline started at George Patts – the one agency that would once have never allowed such idiocy to occur – with the appalling series of ads with young blokes getting pissed, eating suvlaki and ending up in hospital. They seemed to think that putting “hard earned thirst” into the voice over would overcome all the stupidity that preceded it.
Unfortunately, the stupidity immigrated with the account, and spread to other brands along the way. The much awarded Carlton Draught ads are equally appalling. Someone seems to have decided that laughing at your customers (not with them) and telling the world that only morons and bogans drink your beer is a clever way to sell product.
It’s not. In fact, it undermines the entire beer category – quite an achievement.
“There are no dull products, only dull writers”