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Anticipation brewing for the Stella strategy

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Design, Creative, Branwell Johnson, Latest reporters' blogs December 2nd, 2008 by Branwell Johnson

Farewell Peeterman and Eiken Artois, although I hardly got the chance to savour your particular thirst-quenching powers.

InBev has decided this week to turn its world upside down, so not only is it killing off the two brands it introduced within the past two years to create a Stella “family” and so take the heat off beleaguered Stella Artois, it has also handed the Stella Artois advertising account to Mother.

It’s a radical shake-up in both departments. Dealing with the axing of the variants first, InBev seems to be following the philosophy of “kill your dwarves” that recently had an airing at the Marketing Society Annual Conference by David Taylor of brandgym.

His point was that now is not the time to back brand extensions. They steal away investment and resources from the core business and their growth and their revenue contribution is so negligible as to not be worth sustaining. His example was the Heinz Farmers’ Market Chilled Soups, which have apparently contributed £1 million in revenues, whereas the canned core product is delivering five times the growth.

The two beer brands for the chop obviously work in other territories but the sheer amount of effort to break them in the UK is a distraction from dealing with Stella Artois and its problems.

Regarding Mother, the agency placed its tanks on the lawn of Lowe when it was appointed to handle the Stella Artois 4 % launch, apparently a success and while a variant, still within the “core” business. Lowe resigned the main account rather than have its pride bruised further and now the nation’s lager drinkers await to see what Mother will devise for the once “Reassuringly Expensive” lager.

The nit-pickers have already pointed out that Mother’s French Riviera-themed 60s period piece for Stella Artois 4% fails to acknowledge provenance – that Stella is a Belgian beer. The agency will know the challenge it faces in trying to reverse the decline of Stella and its associations with drunken behaviour. It will also know its first work will be under close scrutiny from all quarters of the creative industry – I look forward to the blazing debates that will surely follow the unveiling…