“For a hard earned thirst” is back as VB responds to public demand returning beer to full strength
Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) has announced that Australia’s most iconic beer, Victoria Bitter will return to its original full strength and full flavour from October.
Changes to the packaging, marketing and recipe, with a resultant change in alcohol strength of Victoria Bitter are amongst a raft of changes intended to restore Australia’s most iconic beer “back to its best”. CUB is bringing back the unmistakeable packaging, including reinstating the “Victoria Bitter” name on labels and cans; and restoring the tagline “For a hard earned thirst”.
CUB’s Chief Marketing Officer Andy Gibson says that today’s announcement is a victory for the beer drinkers of Australia: “The Vic Bitter drinkers have spoken and told us that we should not have tinkered with their beer”, Gibson said.
“So we have listened and during the course of October Victoria Bitter will be returning to its best, in fact we reckon it will be better than ever.”
In a first for the brewer, CUB Chief Executive Ari Mervis has penned a full page “We heard you…we’re fixing it” letter to the beer drinkers of Australia, stating that we “had got it wrong” with changes to the brew over the past few years. The ads will appear in newspapers nationally tomorrow.
The new Victoria Bitter will begin to roll out to pubs, bars and bottle shops nationally over the course of October. The wholesale price of Vic Bitter will not change.
22 Comments
Good marketing. Now has restored its functional and emotional point of difference.
Well done VB. Now lets sell some beer.
You can get it ridin’
You can get it slidin’
You can feel it comin’ on about 4
A hard earned thirst needs a big cold beer
And the best cold beer is Vic
Vic Bitter.
You can get it walkin’
You can get it talkin’
You can get it workin’ a plough
(Matter of fact, I’ve got it now)
Victoria Bitter.
It’s amazing how long it takes the bleeding obvious to sink in.
But it may be too late. If you spend the best part of a decade treating your customers as idiots – and portraying them as such in your advertising – it can be hard to win them back.
I can only hope that the marketing geniuses who decided to reinvent our greatest beer brand have all been sacked.
Now if only there was an agency somewhere with creatives who could get a grip of their own egos and put the VB brand first, and the beer might, at least, slow the decline.
The trajectory of VB sales & brand health was in decline long before the switch from 4.9% … it’s a very ballsy and VERY expensive move so hopefully it pays off.
If it does though, prepare to start talking about the stagnation or decline of Carlton Draught because as one wins, the other must lose … especially in Victoria.
It’s also hard to think that this will bring many punters back who have since adopted mid-strength (4XGold) as their beer of choice. This is the real reason for the change, as CUB have never got their mid-strength offer right against Lion.
This beer’s dominance was doomed the very moment Australian males became latte-sipping nancy boys, like me.
Not enough of us actually earn a thirst to keep VB near the top. Niche brand now. This is still the right move though, but its days as market leader are dead and buried.
VB is a great beer served extremely chilled to blokes who’ve been digging a hole in the ground in the sun for 5 hours. Helped a mate’s dad nail a tin roof on a couple of summers ago, and VB tasted pretty bloody good at the end of the day (well the first couple did anyway)
But anytime you’re actually of a mind to taste what you’re drinking, VB is fucked.
So yeah, it’s a great idea to take it back to its roots. Trying to market this to mainstream Australian beer drinkers is just asking for trouble. We’ve moved beyond this kind of beer now, and will only touch it if it’s marketed as THE working man’s beer.
This will allow VB to at least own a positioning again. But don’t expect sales to go through the roof.
Some factual issues there, BV.
When CUB (as it was then) launched Carlton Midstrength (as it was called, before being shortened to MID) it was an immediate success, taking the number 2 spot overall in Qld and number 1, I think, in WA and NT. And it retained that position for a number of years.
So they had a decent product for that category but, as with so many of their brands, couldn’t leave well enough alone and stuffed around with the marketing and (as the name change shows) the branding.
And yes, VB was in a minor decline back before the idiotic reformulating and repackaging – but only in terms of the whole category. It was still the number one beer by a mile. Which it isn’t now.
Almost agree with you, “Hardly Earned” – except the positioning of VB as THE working man’s beer was what gave it credibility with the wider audience. After all, you’re hardly going to go places positioning your beer as the metrosexual beer for wankers (which, come to think of it, is what some of the recent VB ads did).
After almost ten years of marketing departments and ad agencies trying to make their own name rather than building on our biggest beer name, it’ll take a lot to get VB back. My bet: no way.
Foster’s was murdered as a brand in the same way, and there were attempts to repackage it – going back to the original blue-collar values – but once you mortally wound a brand, bringing it back to life is near impossible.
Some factual issues there, Erasmus.
You glossed over the fact that at no time in Carlton Midstrength’s success did it go up against 4XGold. When it did, it didn’t win. The success of the word “Gold” in representing mid-strength without communicating a compromise was the key reason for losing the Carlton Midstrength name. That change had to be made.
VB “in minor decline” is a very polite assessment. The category shift away from full-strength beer to mid, on top of CUB strategically driving growth into Carlton Draught to establish it as a national brand (after reducing it from 4.9% to 4.6% mind you..) are the key reasons for VB losing its position as Australia’s favourite.
There is no way that Carlton Draught could possibly be the sales success it is today without VB going backwards at a furious rate. Having said that, Clems have done a masterful job in building the Carlton brand, hopefully they can re-interpret a hard-earned thirst in the same way.
Bottom line is the product is just simply not as relevant as it once was. The plethora of choice available at similar price points, in more contemporary packaging with an easier drinking profile has depositioned the product.
Sure, it will forever appeal to its loyal followers, and the target of this action and the new campaign will be to retain as many of these punters as possible. But once they leave, and most eventually will, you will never get them back.
Is that the very people who took away “for a hard earned thirst” when they were at Patts Melb now have the brand back and are bringing it back.
That said, those marketers at Fosters have never been the brightest bunch and I don’t blame any agency alone for the work.
Sorry BV, disagree. Or maybe misunderstand.
The strength of midstrength beers in Qld has probalby got more to do with the climate and resultant higher liquid intake than anything else. VB was never particularly huge there anyway So there was no great shift from full strength to mid strength – at least, not in a way that had a big affect on VB.
(There was, of course, the idiotic VB Gold sub-brand, which sunk very quickly and further undermined the VB brand.)
Carlton Midstrength did go up directly against XXXX Gold and did extremely well in that very parochial market. Changing the name to MID was neither here nor there – and certainly not essential. I’d call it silly brand fiddling.
One of the biggest things Carlton Draught had going for it – and which did lower VB sales, as you mentioned – was when Foster’s changed their VB taps in NSW to Carlton Draught taps. That naturally resulted in a large shift almost overnight – and made the ads for Carlton Draught look a lot more successful than they really were.
But VBs strength back in its home in Victoria, and I think the other states, was always in packaged beer. Blokes drinking after work with their mates. That’s where they’ve lost the real market share.
Though I agree with your conclusion. They won’t get many of their old fans back; and they’ll probably keep losing the ones who stuck around – except for maybe Russell Crowe.
Good move
Not sold that it will shift current brand trajectory
Other brands like Carlton Draught, Pure Blonde and Corona will need to start selling some volume in package outside of VIC to pick up the cost of this change
Or is the strategy to hold wholesale price but reduce discounts in the independents?
‘Amusing to me’ does raise a valid point. Patts, or Clems i guess now, appeared to drive the redefining of the ‘new’ man which gave us Kebab, eating the coat of arms (ads i liked) plus the getting rid of everything they basically are presenting of what the brand needs to go back to
And VB Midstrength Lager was the brain child of this team
Erasmus you seem to be close to all the work done and might be able to help explain the move back to what was changed
Is VB 800ml and VB Original Ale coming back?
Surely they can go to the share files and dig out old material, polish it, then launch
And cracking summer of cricket or Boony
Dear Hardly Earned,
Perhaps you should step out of your latte sipping world and realise for a moment that there are people who actually work physically for a living.
Some people actually stand up all day.
They probably deserve a beer at the end of it.
The minimum wage still exists and its not very much.
Cheers
To all the people who are going to get on here and go on about “they should never have got rid of the old ‘you can get it …’ campaign”, just remember this – it was as that campaign was dragging on into the late nineties that the sales started going into decline, so it was pointless to keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome.
Not very long ago there were two real choices on tap – New or VB. You could get Guinness if you went to one of those fancy pubs, but you only went there when you wanted to treat the missus to a traditional gourmet Italian meal of Chicken Parma and chips.
Tradies drank VB. Office types drank New.
Cut to 2012. On tap, office workers can choose from Coopers, Boags, Hahn Premium, Blonde, Carlton Draught, Squires (x8), Carlsberg, Heineken, Peroni, Stella Art Garfunkel, Resches, Asahi, Kirin, Boston Mill, Vale Ale, Cider, Cascade and New.
While tradies have a slightly bigger choice of taps – Coopers, Boags, Hahn Premium, Blonde, Carlton Draught, Squires (x8), Carlsberg, Heineken, Peroni, Stella, Resches, Asahi, Kirin, Boston Mill, Vale Ale, Cider, Cascade, New, Bundy-cola and VB.
You can get it while you’re choosing…
The machine is in over drive but the guys, or are they blokes, that are commenting wouldnt have had a big cold Vic. Couldn’t handle it. And way to metro just like the creative work looks
Does anyone remember VB Raw? Yep I thought so….
i always read the long copy press ads with my pie and sauce…
Way to metro is quite a funny comment.
I have a lot of ‘tradie’ mates and they are actually more metro than me.
Moisturiser in their ute doors because they are working with their hands.
they wear Tsubi’s jeans, Paul Smith Shirts (not the socks – they look nice but a bloody rip off for $25 bucks- direct quote.)
You know the beers they drink at the moment – Summer Bright Ale.
They used to drink Carona a lot but now prefer that.
I’m not sure that upping the alcohol content and pitching at this old version of what Australia used to be is going to do much good.
Might get the guys who hang around the TAB section of the pub but thats about it.
Everyone bets on their phones now anyway.
I ALWAYS HAVE A HARD EARNED THIRST
Really? Mine’s generally flaccid. Or do you mean hard-earned?
is it possible to purchase VB in the United States, or to have it shipped to U.S
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