From a sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll scandal at Scottish & Newcastle to a roller-coaster ride of acquisitions at Marston’s, Stephen Oliver looks back fondly on his time in the trade.
It’s not often that I get involved in a sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll scandal. Well, not these days, anyway. But that’s where I found myself back in 1988, when I was marketing manager for lager at the then Scottish & Newcastle Breweries. The creatives in London had come up with the crazy idea of videoing Plasticine shapes that transformed themselves ever more bizarrely to backing music by a contemporary Scottish band.
For this ad they’d chosen a rather grungy lot from Aberdeen, The Shamen. We held the launch party in a Glasgow nightclub. Around midnight, one of the journos asked if they could have a word. “Why does S&N want to be associated with a band that condones illegal drug-taking and whose stage act features the Queen and Pope bonking?” Cold sweat. “Clearly, the company wouldn’t want to endorse anything like that,” I offered, inadequately.
S&N marketing boss in £1m ad blunder was the headline in The Glasgow Herald, shortly followed by the rest of the press north of the border, then The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express. I had a tricky chat later that evening with Sir Alick Rankin, chairman of S&N. What made it more difficult was that this topped a week in which the firm had been pilloried in the press for putting up rents at Home Brewery and the PR director left after leaks about the closure of Matthew Brown brewery.
Luckily – and not for the last time in my career – I had a very supportive boss. Rankin knew we were trying to push the boundaries with our campaigns and they were certainly growing McEwan’s market share. “Don’t cock up next time,” he said. With that, I was out of his office, huge sigh of relief, and a few days later the ad was on air, without music by The Shamen. The cost? Not £1m, but just £25,000.
The emergence of pubcos
This was all in the heady days of the ’80s when it was all a rather traditional beerage. There were changes afoot, though. When Lord Younger came up to Edinburgh as part of his consultation on the Beer Orders I was part of the team that presented to him our view of what would happen, with the emergence of pubcos and the break-up of the old vertical integration.
By the mid-90s I joined (old) Marston’s, in charge of brewing and brands. I followed John Dunsmore, who later would return to Scottish Courage to sell it to Heineken, as part of the continuing globalisation of the industry.
The old Marston’s was a very political place with some larger-than-life characters. David Gordon, the MD, had been a professional musician in a former life. Much of the company’s marketing and sales were founded on hospitality. The Irish golf trips were famous for their camaraderie and entertainment. Gordon liked nothing more than to descend on an unsuspecting bar after the game, commandeer the piano and entertain everyone until late into the night.
When (old) Marston’s bought Pitcher and Piano, though, the die was cast. The City didn’t get why this Midlands ale brewer, famous for Pedigree and not much else, was delving into posh city-style bars. Gordon was unceremoniously removed and there was a Kristallnacht of most of the rest of the board soon afterwards. Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries (W&D) was waiting in the wings for this slip-up, seized its chance in 1999 and Marston’s fell to W&D.
David Thompson, who recently retired after 40 years at the company, the last in a long line of family members of what is now (new) Marston’s, offered me the job of running all the company’s tenancies. And so for the next nine years I left brewing and brands behind and embarked on a rollercoaster of acquisitions that characterised so much of the early 2000s. Mansfield, Burtonwood, Jennings, Sovereign, Celtic, Eldridge Pope, Refresh and Ringwood all followed shortly afterwards and managing the integration of those businesses was a full-time job. It was a frenetic time, much of it driven by the City and shareholders’ desire for deal making.
In 2007 came the smoking ban and licensing reform in quick succession. Both of these presented huge logistical challenges to pub licensees and pub companies. Smoking, in particular, fundamentally changed the nature of pub-going and put many smaller pubs out of business or made them very marginal. Meanwhile, food in pubs grew even stronger and the take-home market grew to be half of all beer. We spent millions putting up shelters for our pubs, so punters could enjoy a tab outside. But the cold winds were blowing through tenancies in general, not just through their shelters.
Rise of the microbrewers
Progressive beer duty was introduced just in time for the 2002 World Cup. Over the 11 years since then, the number of microbrewers has increased hugely. At a Society of Independent Brewers conference in 2006 I called some of them “kitchen cupboard comedians”, trying to distinguish between those in it for the money and those who cared for beer quality. I nearly got lynched. A brewer threatened to “lamp me” and the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) airwaves were full of indignation.
We do now have a robust cask-ale market that enjoys reaching out to a new, younger audience. I’d like to think there is still room for the classic ales, those we grew up with. So much has changed in the 28 years I have been in the beer and pubs business. What I hope will remain constant is the friendship and conviviality of people in this great sector. We can be rivals, suppliers and customers, or partners in some venture or trade organisation, but whatever we are to each other, we have always got time for a beer together. Long may it be so.
Stephen Oliver was formerly managing director of Marston’s Beer and Pub Company. He leaves Marston’s at the end of September to run his own executive coaching business, www.trigpointcoaching.com. He is on the board at George Bateman & Son and Manchester Metropolitan University
