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Beer Bistro's Stephen Beaumont & Lakeport Interview

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KeithsGuy
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Beer Bistro's Stephen Beaumont & Lakeport Interview

Post by KeithsGuy »

I was watching Hamilton's CHCH TV with Mark Habsher last night and caught an interview with Stephen Beaumont from Beer Bistro and the woman from Lakeport (I can't remember her name).

It was essentially about Labatt's marking tactics used to promote their new Genuine Honey offering to compete with the cheaper beers like Lakeport Honey. Apparently Labatt had hired some women to parade around downtown Toronto in short shorts and tight tops holding big yellow picket signs handing out little bottles of 100% pure Canadian honey to motorists as they drove past.

Lakeports stance on this was that Labatt's new offering has not slowed down their sales at all but are eager for Labatt to try whatever they can to try and hurt their popularity. The Lakeport lady was holding up, tapping and rattling her 12-pack so much that Mark had to tell her to stop with the product placement. It was actually quite funny.

Stephen's comments centered more around how the cheaper priced beers have created a more segmented market. People are starting to realize that the Canadian/Blue beer tastes very similar to beers like the Lakeport, so why pay a higher price for it. This has helped refine the craft segmant and prompted others to trade up to the premium/craft beers searching for something better.

Anyway.. just an interesting interview I thought I'd post incase people missed it.

s.

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JerCraigs
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Post by JerCraigs »

Think how cheap labatt could make their beer if they didnt have to pay all those girls to hand out honey, i mean wow! I bet nobodies thought of that, make the beer the same but charge less because you don't spend a mint on advertising!

wait... :roll:

ps - we need a devil emoticon that doesn't look so angry.

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Rob Creighton
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Post by Rob Creighton »

Its kind of nice to see a mega behaving so desparately. Congrats to all micro's and regionals that have them over reacting so badly.

Josh Oakes
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Post by Josh Oakes »

I've always maintained that a case of Blue or Canadian pretty much has a $10 advertising surcharge on it. I applaud Lakeport and any other company that is willing to do what they can to bring some sanity to beer prices in this country. The floor prices are still absurd, but that's not the brewers' fault. I'm glad the Canadian consumer is starting to realize that beer should not cost what it does. That whether you wish to consider it a subsidy to the Toronto advertising industry or a charitable donation to the big brewers so that they can maintain they highest profit per barrel ratio in the world, you're paying too much when you buy a major brand. The only thing more idiotic is paying a premium over and above the outlandish costs for mainstream brands to buy some ghetto-grade budget brand from Mexico or the Netherlands (or anywhere else). Discounters, the good micros and the good imports are the only things that make sense.

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Belgian
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Post by Belgian »

Josh Oakes wrote:I'm glad the Canadian consumer is starting to realize that beer should not cost what it does.
I love that Teresa Cascioli kind of said 'screw the Status Quo, I'm a smart resourceful woman and I can show up the Big Guys with better value stuff.' She is president and CEO, and if MolBatt could invent a law to prevent her free rights to make them look uncompetitive they would, the bullying bastards.
from the website
Thanks to everyone who is helping Lakeport win the beer war. Stick with us and we’ll continue to fight to keep beer prices fair!
It would also be great if the someone could publish a study of estimated per-liter production costs for ALL canadian beers, and show this relative to price, as a dollar ratio of value. It would intrigue people to actually examine the stuff they are gulping down, in terms of quality too, ie. maybe better ingredients make a less junky beverage, since I'm ingesting this after all.
In Beerum Veritas

old faithful
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Post by old faithful »

Truly amazing how the big brewers let "beer" (in our terms) get away from them, and inevitably someone saw the opportunity: make what they do and charge less. Earlier, John Sleeman saw a different opportunity: make half-way between what big brewers make and micros and people will beat a path to your door (which happened to a point although I think a lot of John's margin today is from his price beers). And earlier and still entrepreneurs made full-flavoured, traditional beer and many people bought that, too, some trading up from the Labatt Blue/Canadian/Bud crowd as a result of this segmentation. I truly wonder for how much longer Blue and Bud and Ex will constitute the norm in this country. They will hold on in rural and small town areas which are slower to change but ultimately beer, like wine has already become, will be a multi-faceted market. Interesting that it has takn microbrewed beer and some imports a full generation to get to the point where we can see tangible evidence of the shift, it has taken far longer than I thought.

Gary
Last edited by old faithful on Thu Jun 30, 2005 6:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Belgian
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Post by Belgian »

old faithful wrote:I truly wonder for how much longer Blue and Bud and Ex will constitute the norm in this country. They will hold on in rural and small town areas which are slower to change but ultimately beer, like wine has already become, will be a multi-faceted market.
Gary
The Macros will aggressively fight to promote bad pseudo-micros to dilute & confuse the market, making folks believe these 'micros' or 'craft beers' aren't all that different or hip. MolBatt are GOOD at marketing, and not beer-making. They don't need to EDUCATE the drinker about beer, they need to BEFUDDLE him so he doesn't drift away into good-beer land forever.

But you and I will always know these stealth macros are not micros. 8)

Also - I think there will always be a market for watery, flavorless beer. You can't help some people appreciate wine with any real character either. Pseudo-wine and pseudo-beer have an appeal with some completely nice, normal intelligent people. Same with chain fast-food and instant frozen dinners - these foods are often crap but many enjoy them unsuspectingly.
In Beerum Veritas

Josh Oakes
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Post by Josh Oakes »

Belgian wrote: Also - I think there will always be a market for watery, flavorless beer. You can't help some people appreciate wine with any real character either. Pseudo-wine and pseudo-beer have an appeal with some completely nice, normal intelligent people. Same with chain fast-food and instant frozen dinners - these foods are often crap but many enjoy them unsuspectingly.
I think it's not so much enjoying them, as not knowing what true enjoyment is. The big breweries will tell you how good a cold one in front of the game at the end of the day is. You say "sure". That's enjoyment in your mind, because you don't understand how things could be better. They can, of course, be better than the lowest common denominator, but the individual consumer I think has to shift their mindset a bit. They have to cease thinking that the cold one with the game is as good as it gets. Once they see that, it's all systems go.

Then again, some people just have no taste.

old faithful
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Post by old faithful »

I believe that the public had become accustomed by an education from sophisticated marketing to a blander and blander product. The process was complex: in part this was driven by the need to sell a lesser quality product (because higher margin), in part the industry was following public taste through its repeated polling which showed people wanted less flavor in beer. A lot of those people polled, were I think, unsure what beer should taste like (or outside its traditional market) so they said, "I'll pick that one", i.e. an ultra-light sample of refreshing charcater and not much more. But in lands where beer derived from local agriculture and became rooted by social custom and not by marketing, all the beers were full-flavoured: England, Belgium, Northern France, Germany, Czech lands. And good beer has held on there because a certain percentage of people will never lose the taste for it. That has occurred here but in a different way, through a different kind of education (spurred by beer writers in great part initially, also by homebrewers), and people got the taste for the real thing. In a consumer society where people increasingly consider the merits of choices for their disposable income, that segment will only grow and beers that offer that alternative (e.g. our micros, some imports) will thrive. We've gotten to the point almost of, say, real ale in England (which holds, what 10% of the beer market if that?) but through a different route. All the markets internationally are becoming segmented and much like wine, beer is starting to disengage from its cultural roots (the point of that movie recently about French wine) but who cares, everything changes, wasn't wine originally an import to French agriculture, from Italy and the Legions, probably? People will move around and change things around because that is the history of humanity and if, say, it brings great English or German beer to Ontario (either by direct importation or local versions being made) I for one will be happy. Has anyone seen that movie? I assumed from reviews that it had an anti-globalisation theme but maybe that is not right, I'd like to see it to judge for myself.

Gary

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DukeofYork = Richard
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Post by DukeofYork = Richard »

Mondovino was a very interesting look not just at the French wine industry, but the wine industry as a whole. How the tastes of one extremely popular wine writer has led to a homogenisation of wine production in the large estates worldwide (could this ever happen with beer ... everyone trying to make Dark Lord or BA Speedway Stout?).

More interesting is comparing the serious, measured and insightful comments of the small French producers with the naive double-talk garbage spewed by the American wine producers. That difference rang true but was incredibly stark in the film.

FINALLY, onto the beer... I think it's funny to look at mainstream beer now that I've worked a few months in a marketing department. It is almost the perfect marketing 'creation' ... they all taste the same, so the marketing is almost completely an academic exercise. It must be very exciting to be a marketer for these companies, knowing that it is you and you alone upon whom the beer depends for its survival.

Steve Beaumont
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Post by Steve Beaumont »

All this talk of marketing to dictate tastes ignores the fact that the majors' two flagships are either stagnant or sagging in sales, mainly because consumers are either balking at paying a premium price for a beer that tastes esentially the same as the buck-a-beer brands, or trading up to more full-flavoured beers. I honestly believe that Molson and Labatt have no idea how to effectively stop the bleeding.

Re: my CHTV interview, it's always fun to be on air with Teresa from Lakeport, even if she doesn't necessarily feel the same way about me. The observant among you will note, however, that on this one momentous occasion, we actually ended up agreeing on something! And that's definitely one for the history books!

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Belgian
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Post by Belgian »

Josh Oakes wrote:
Belgian wrote: Also - I think there will always be a market for watery, flavorless beer. You can't help some people appreciate wine with any real character either. .
I think it's not so much enjoying them, as not knowing what true enjoyment is.... They have to cease thinking that the cold one with the game is as good as it gets. Once they see that, it's all systems go.

Then again, some people just have no taste.
Two points there. I agree with the latter - some people have no taste, either lacking capacity or lacking will to overcome the inertia of habitual thinking - even a sense of peer compliance, not to 'be weird' and shift from a brand that is 'accepted' and socially compliant to ensure having friends, getting laid, success among colleagues... they are afraid to offer their neighbor or boss anything that might be "unusual."

But to the former point - that people can shift their thinking (assuming a capacity for taste) I maintain that many people very mechanically just balk when something isn't Corona or Keiths or some thin, sweet merlot. They jump back from too much stimulation of flavor from something better, and prefer the aromatically numb but quenching watery substitute. It's almost like a base animal fear, because it's so irrational and does not admit a broader reality at all - eg that noticeable hops or tannins can be nice if you just stop freaking out about it, at the very least it won't kill you so why not get a grip.

But re: what M. Beaumont says about the majors having no clue how to stop their bleeding out, in part due to people shifting to better beer for the same money, well obviously that indicates inherent taste and a willingness to overcome both their 'new flavor' inhibitions and the idea that brand compliance equals success. All good for real, quality beer.
In Beerum Veritas

borderline_alcoholic
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Post by borderline_alcoholic »

Steve Beaumont wrote:All this talk of marketing to dictate tastes ignores the fact that the majors' two flagships are either stagnant or sagging in sales, mainly because consumers are either balking at paying a premium price for a beer that tastes esentially the same as the buck-a-beer brands, or trading up to more full-flavoured beers. I honestly believe that Molson and Labatt have no idea how to effectively stop the bleeding.
That is completely typical from market leaders who have gotten used to having no real competition to speak of - the Molson-Labbatts war had really entered (mostly) a stalemate a long time ago, so both have grown used to just surviving alongside each other. (Although it did take an alarmingly long while for Molson to respond to Inbev pursuing the specialty beer consumer.)

I also think that it will be a long time before they figure out what to do - and probably the best thing in the meantime is to publicly ignore the micro-beer movement as financially insignificant while they formulate a strategy instead of all of this very publicly embarassing panicking... I think we will see more increasingly desperate marketing, however.

Isn't it fun to watch behemoths shoot themselves in the feet?

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