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30-06-2013, 16:30
Visit The Pub Curmudgeon site (http://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2013/06/let-there-be-squabbling.html)



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Britain’s major brewers, with the backing of CAMRA, are planning to launch a generic advertising campaign entitled Let There Be Beer (http://www.lettherebebeer.com/). Its aims are to raise the profile of drinking beer on all kinds of different occasions, and to urge people who are not regular beer drinkers to fall back in love with it. While the objective is laudable, first impressions are that it comes across more as a typical lager commercial, and that it fails to put much emphasis on pubs, points made by Pete Brown in this blogpost (http://petebrown.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/let-there-be-beer-wonderful-idea-flawed.html). It’s also hard to avoid the feeling that any such industry-wide campaign has a slight smack of desperation about it.
However, some in the brewing industry don’t feel able to give it any kind of welcome whatsoever. There have been some spectacularly negative comments on Pete’s post, such as “So, it's just another big bucks, ad-based, brand building exercise” and “So it's big brands coming together to promote supermarket sales of their mainstream products. Hmm, it might be a good idea from their point of view but it does nothing for my business.” This comes across as a very blinkered attitude.
The greatest success of beer industry campaigning in recent years has been the scrapping of the duty escalator, which was achieved through all sections of the trade putting aside their differences and speaking with one voice. Sadly, it seems this lesson has not been learned, and the squabbling and finger-pointing has started up again. Of course everyone has the right to express their own opinion and make constructive criticism. However, don’t imagine for a minute that it will cut any ice with the anti-drink lobby to say “we’re craft brewers. We’re different from the big bad boys.”
And it shouldn’t be forgotten that five-sixths of draught beer is lager and keg, so promoting Carling and John Smith’s is, in effect, championing pubs. Surely it’s better for people to be drinking Carling in the pub than prune juice at home.
Full credit to CAMRA for signing up to a broad-based campaign such as this.
I’ll be happy to put a link in the sidebar once it’s up and running.


More... (http://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2013/06/let-there-be-squabbling.html)