How to create a successful national marketing campaign

There’s A Beer For That was a genuinely unique campaign, given its mission to enhance consumer awareness and education of all beer, in a category that has thousands of brands and many competitive producers.

In fact, there have been very few category campaigns at all, demonstrating how difficult it is to collaborate and inspire collective activation.

Wine is sometimes referenced as a notable example of a coordinated category approach and it is. However, success has partly been driven by the winemakers from certain origins working together under the banner of organisations such as Wines of Australia, Chile and South Africa. Generally, though, it’s the retailers that have driven their own category approach because a high proportion of sales are own-label and they’ve had the incentive and foresight to educate consumers to improve their customer experience and sales.

Without genuine, comparable precedent, acknowledgment must therefore be given to the global brewers and British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) who devised and funded TABFT. They recognised the benefit of this approach and have sustained collaboration and funding over the last five years.

The campaign brief

Whereas brand campaigns will have a well-defined and clear target audience, brand personality, tone of voice and product heritage, a category campaign is very different. It had a potential target audience of all men and women 18+, beer drinkers and non-beer drinkers, with the challenge of having to represent all beers through new, motivating and unique messages that were supported by a wide range of stakeholders. In addition, these messages needed to be relevant to a wide range of people in a tone of voice and approach that is exciting and inclusive.

That’s not an easy brief and, perhaps, the first manifestation ‘Let There Be Beer’ demonstrated that it is not easy to get all these ingredients right. But, in fairness, the funders recognised this and persisted because they believed that collectively tackling the challenges the category faced was worthwhile.

In 2012, these challenges included declining beer volumes and value with fierce competition from other alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, poor category reputation driven by an image of low quality, homogeneity and a lack of broad consumer appeal. Beer was seen as having narrow relevance and occasion fit with a fragmented industry of competitive brewers, all having different agendas, and competing for a larger piece of a smaller cake.

Creating a successful campaign

The creation of a strong campaign strategy and four years of relevant and exciting programmes was the result of three factors. Firstly, our strategy was driven by consumer insight. Research identified the main barriers to drinking beer, which led to the three core messages of quality, diversity and versatility.

Secondly, the global brewers understood that the campaign had to include and involve the whole industry. We recognised that the diversity of beer was not only motivating for consumers but would also be a uniting factor for the industry and allowed us to promote all styles of beer in a brand agnostic way.

We built on this and drove collaboration by establishing Britain’s Beer Alliance. By inviting the whole industry to join an alliance that supported the campaign at no cost we could offer real value in terms of inclusion of their beers and pubs into our digital tools – beermatch, beer explorer, website and social channels – giving mutual benefit for breweries, pubs and off-trade retailers.

Thirdly, we developed creative programmes across the full marketing mix with a great look and feel. We gave beer a new body language, interesting messages and unisex tone of voice working with a wide range of beer experts to help get it right.

The programmes focused on driving reappraisal, education and new occasions that all the industry could support and were reinforced with TV advertising, social and digital tools, media partnerships (Guardian and Telegraph), experiential events (Foodies Festivals and Picturehouse Cinemas) and activation in major retailers, including promotions in Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Co-op and Spar.

The results

TABFT delivered tangible category successes including a renaissance in beer, category momentum and image enhancement. The whole industry played a role; from small independent brewers and pubs driving innovation and excitement through to bigger brewers changing their messaging to focus on quality, food and appealing to a wider audience on new occasions.

Our campaign took the messages of quality, diversity and versatility to millions of people, making them accessible and interesting to the mainstream audience not just beer enthusiasts.

When the campaign launched our TV advertising reached over half the adults in the UK (25 million+). In 2017, our programmes reached over 50 million people, while an unprecedented seven major off-trade retailers activated TABFT programmes instore, online and digital, and 21 pub and restaurant groups ran activity in over 4,000 outlets. Attitude and behaviour measures improved, with a 12% rise for ‘made with craftmanship’ and +4% for ‘is made with natural ingredients’ (Heineken UK Beer Category Image and Behaviour Tracker) whilst 31% of Guardian readers exposed to the campaign said they would be more likely to drink beer with a meal.

Evolution of the campaign

It’s early days but in scoping out the new campaign TABFT provides a positive platform on which to build, most notably, the power of working collaboratively. Together, we can develop great consumer programmes, galvanise the trade to communicate the messages out through pubs and retailers to reach millions. We can change attitude, behaviour and the reputation of the beer category and industry as a whole.

Now is the time for the campaign to evolve, continuing to promote the many positive stories of beer and pubs and their importance to society and, as a result, also raise awareness of the threat to our way of life from unsustainable increases in beer duty.