By Farrin Foster.

 

John Baker, partner at KWP Advertising, has worked on marketing an iconic beer for more than ten years and he laments that this masculine image is still at the forefront of beer promotion. He thinks that male targeting ‘is a mistake’ made by many of the big beer companies.

“I think it’s wrong for breweries to stereotype beer as the domain of men…a lot of women drink beer.”

“Things like VB are deliberately positioned as working man’s beer, down-to earth, Australian blokes in stubbies and King Gees doing a hard day’s yakka…we’re not as overt as that.”

But the pigeon-holed beer drinker figure, as promoted by the ‘VB’ style of advertising, tends to remain in the public mind as the dominant Australian character.   

Even the supposedly androgynous, low-carb Pure Blonde can’t even the keel. Carlton United’s new great money-spinner sees the creation of a beautiful albino wonderland as the setting for their advertising campaign. But the unlikely provider of beer in this unlikely setting is an uncouth, irreverent, blue collar truck driver. There’s a clear inference that he’s the real beer drinker.

This reliance on the pot-bellied flagship leads to beer culture being exclusive. And in the end this exclusivity does not only reject women, but also other thriving Australian sub cultures: migrants, winemakers, homosexuals and well…people who like being sober. These groups are actually just as ‘Australian’ as a good VB swilling working class male.

It seems the people who drink beer in this nation are the same people who were drinking beer here ten years ago. John says the customer they’re selling to hasn’t really changed:

“Except they’ve grown up I suppose. We’re now finding that you’ve got distinct markets in terms of you’ve got older drinkers…45 plus…who are die hard Coopers fans. We’re also in a different space now because of a lot of the younger drinkers coming in…the 18 to 28 year olds…”

But the difference with the younger crowd these daysis not their attitude towards beer or culture; it’s a simple matter of expanded choice.

“Younger beer drinkers now have a repertoire of between 6 and 8 beers that they choose from where as five or ten years ago they might have had two or three…so we’re competing against a lot more, it’s making it harder.”

Beer drinking and beer drinkers haven’t changed. They are a steady and reliable facet of Australian life. But it’s a part of Australian life that only some Australians want to partake in, and while beer drinking should remain a traditional part of our national culture forever more it seems a little antiquated to continue holding it up as the main cornerstone of who we are.

In the past ten years things have changed in Australia and beer imagery just can’t keep up. It doesn’t need to, necessarily, but our attachment to beer as the primary representative of who we are should be reconsidered.