Ontario Craft Beer Survey

[shintriad]

I just took a survey sponsored by Ontario Craft Brewers. Seems they're getting serious about advertising and getting the right message to the consumer, whether it's to focus on taste, quality of ingredients, local pride, etc. Let's hope this amounts to a stronger local industry.

If you want to take it, maybe it'll give them some useful feedback and let them know what real beer fans think:

http://www.hotspex.com/clickspex.asp?id=215

You'd have to sign up for a hotspex account. It's basically a site for consumer surveys that awards prizes. If you have lots of time on your hands, it's a decent time-killer.

Has anyone here ever taken an actual beer survey, where they sit you down for an hour, let you taste beer and then pay you 50 bucks? Cool gig if you can find it.

[JerCraigs]

I did two focus groups but neither offered actual beer. One was a random thing in the mall where they were surveying for what beers/packaging to include in the labatt christmas pack. Another was for Molson Canadian Light ads.

[tupalev]

I've done a focus group for Carlsberg before, and for Labatt, where actual beer was served.

[GregClow]

Has anyone here ever taken an actual beer survey, where they sit you down for an hour, let you taste beer and then pay you 50 bucks? Cool gig if you can find it.

I took one of those years ago. I don't remember which brewery it was for, or if they even told us - it might've been a blind taste test thing. I'm pretty sure all the beer was crap, though.

[GregClow]

http://www.hotspex.com/clickspex.asp?id=215

"We are interested in the opinions of men and women between the ages of 19 and 34 years who drink beer."

Looks like the craft brewers are just as fixated on the younger demographic as the big boys. I guess the opinions of 36 year olds like myself just don't matter...

[Josh Oakes]

I'd be curious to see what the results are. Probably nothing experienced brewers don't already know. My take is that local pride only works once - people will try the beer if it's made around the corner. But nobody will come back to a beer they don't favour just because it's local. They might in really small towns (Creemore would be a good bet for local loyalty) but not anywhere else.

It comes down to the value proposition. To get away with charging more, you have to give more. The pricing of Molbat's flagship products, however, is a problem. In the US the price differential is so great between what macros charge and what micros can profitably charge that the micros have no choice but to make serious beer in order to provide enough product differentiation to justify the price differentation. By doing so, you force the consumer to make that big leap into Flavour Country. It's risky, but they had to do it and now micros in the US almost always operate strictly on the flavour equation, even the bigger ones that are able to sell at fairly low prices (Sierra Nevada, New Belgium).

In Ontario, you can buy cheaply-produced, technically-flawed macrobrew like Keith's for more than the price of Black Oak, reinforcing that Keith's is a microbrew, a myth InBev happily promotes. The price differentation between the biggest brands and the micros isn't so great. This means that a lot of micros figure they need to play in the same ball game, by making boring beer. Hence why there are so many half-assed lagers coming out of Ontario's microbreweries. Very few truly differentiate on flavour. They don't have to differentiate much unless they plan on charging $15 a six-pack, (which is well beyond the acceptable price point for most consumers anyway), so they don't.

With little product differentiation, little price differentiation and a plethora of fake micros in the marketplace the Ontario consumer has little reason to make the switch to truly good beer. If your microbrew isn't much different than a macrobrew in character, price becomes a factor in the purchasing decision. So unless you offer something funky like an embossed green retro bottle, it's a bit of a weird place to be in the market because you still have to compete with Blue or even Old Milwaukee in the Beer Store, where product placement or second-party ordering puts you at a disadvantage.

Now that's my take, and I really hope that the survey supports my contention that differentiation must be on flavour (not the same as quality) and we start seeing more micros do like Black Oak and drop the premium lager to concentrate on tastier beer. Except for Denison's. They're allowed to make all the lager they want.

[Josh Oakes]

http://www.hotspex.com/clickspex.asp?id=215

"We are interested in the opinions of men and women between the ages of 19 and 34 years who drink beer."

Looks like the craft brewers are just as fixated on the younger demographic as the big boys. I guess the opinions of 36 year olds like myself just don't matter...

Yeah, old farts like you are set in your ways. You probably only drink one bottle a week, and it will be the same brand from now until the day you die. Welcome to the world of beer marketing.

Following through on my thesis above, I would suggest that beer is one area where old dogs can learn new tricks, especially old dogs with a mature adult's level of disposable income whose changing needs in the flavour department aren't being met by macrobrews desperately trying to attract the barely-legal market. Being trendy and living fast take a back seat to an appreciation for life and all its flavours and that makes 30-45 a great market for microbrews. Not that I have access to reliable demographic information about craft beer drinkers or anything

[PRMason]

My demographic is 25-55 years of age. Actually, its whoever wants to drink my damn hoppy beers, but the target is 25-55.
On the subject of Ontario Small Brewers Association, they have just hired Bill White, former brewer and pitch-man for ImBev. He is most closely associated with Keith's and has done many tastings with the Leffe and Hoegarden brands. Call me paranoid, but having a man that was a head brewmaster at Labatts working to help the micros is like puting Jean Chretien in charge of your bank account. Even if its just perception, it sends the wrong message.

[shintriad]

I would suggest that beer is one area where old dogs can learn new tricks, especially old dogs with a mature adult's level of disposable income whose changing needs in the flavour department aren't being met by macrobrews

Very good point. My dad is 60 and just now crossing that taste threshold where "bitter" can also mean "good." This is entirely due to my own persuasive beer-geek influence, which makes me think standard advertising alone won't convert too many people. Habitual Bud drinkers have grown to genuinely enjoy the "taste"; who are we to tell them it's crap?

Here's a Slate article about "the great American beer crisis" that touches on the growth of imports and differences in marketing tactics:

http://www.slate.com/id/2117896/?GT1=6443

It is odd that OCB is going after this younger demographic. At 19, I was buying Olde English, fer chrissakes.

[GregClow]

Related to this, I've just stumbled across an article about the Ontario Craft Brewers from the latest issue of Marketing magazine:

http://www.marketingmag.ca/shared/print ... 8497_68497

(It will probably try to send the article to your printer, so be ready to stop it...)

Nice to know that they've got their first ad campaign ready to go. No mention of hiring Bill White, though.

[Rob Creighton]

My demographic is 25-55 years of age. Actually, its whoever wants to drink my damn hoppy beers, but the target is 25-55.
On the subject of Ontario Small Brewers Association, they have just hired Bill White, former brewer and pitch-man for ImBev. He is most closely associated with Keith's and has done many tastings with the Leffe and Hoegarden brands. Call me paranoid, but having a man that was a head brewmaster at Labatts working to help the micros is like puting Jean Chretien in charge of your bank account. Even if its just perception, it sends the wrong message.

On a stronger note, having the front man for the biggest bullsh*t beer marketing campaign in existense is unacceptable. I don't care that Interbrew flew him around the world to be photo'd with busty babes drinking beer. He does not and will never represent our product. This falls into the category of b*** ***k stupid. A very, very bad choice IMO!

[Josh Oakes]

Related to this, I've just stumbled across an article about the Ontario Craft Brewers from the latest issue of Marketing magazine:

http://www.marketingmag.ca/shared/print ... 8497_68497

(It will probably try to send the article to your printer, so be ready to stop it...)

Nice to know that they've got their first ad campaign ready to go. No mention of hiring Bill White, though.

Well, more power to them if it works. But what they're talking about is focusing on the perception by way of marketing. I was rather hoping for perception based on flavour myself. It is beyond a stretch to say that anybody is brewing beer like they did 4000 years ago. Basically, whatever works amongst the masses in Ontario probably won't work on the beer geeks of Ontario, who know that the analogy of Australian wine would best be applied to places like Washington and Oregon. It wasn't just marketing, they actually did make improvements on the flavour of their wine. Ontario consumers have been proven gullible before of course, so it might work. I wish them luck. I just wish they'd insist that the brewers raise their game at the same time. There's a handful that are already there, of course, but too many just aren't.

[Jon Walker]

What if they're just trying to figure out how to appeal to the young Bud drinker and convert them rather than covert the beers to appeal to the young Bud drinker?

If they can find a way to make micro beer cool for the younger crowd (dare I say it...trendy) then maybe that means greater market share and more revenue. For God's sakes, 18-25's were smoking Cuban cigars in clubs and bars a few years ago because somebody got the idea that it wasn't only for crusty old men. I even saw young women smoking them. Why? Because it got marketed as refined, glamorous and the indulgence of the wealthy and famous. Same thing is going on right now with poker...somebody figured out that it could be marketed as cool and guess what...poker is EVERYWHERE right now, in bars and clubs across the city and young people are eating it up. Same game, different perception. Find a way to trigger that kind of micro=cool equation and there could be somewhat of a shift in the public perception of good beer.

Or it could be the trend of the week. But some of those people will stick with it because they realize it really is good.

My 2 cents...