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The big challenge if your a marketer of domestic beer is your scale and ubiquity can be both a blessing and curse.

The downside of mass is that you lose your cool pretty fast. While domestics have experimented with more upscale/premium lines and a little bit of packaging innovation, they haven't really exploited the opportunities that exist with packaging. With the US design and art community often seen as being at the forefront of trends, it seems an obvious opportunity for the big domestics to work with these guys.

Heineken in Europe has done a lot of the work in this space, with the latest being a collaboration with Parisian packaging design legend Ora-Ito.



Of course, the other mass brand to do lots of cool stuff with graphic designers, was Coke.

Packaging seems like such an easy way for a mass brand to do something interesting and surgical to push into cooler spaces.


Posted by Ed Cotton Most brewers focus their innovation around new taste, flavor and lightness profiles.

They focus on the beer itself, Heineken has done the same, but it's also created some interesting innovation in packaging and product delivery; the keg can and the draught keg are two breakthrough ideas.

In March of this year, the will launch take the delivery innovation a step further with the Beer Tender.


It's a home draught beer system developed in conjinction with Krups and others.

It's a great move on so many levels; it elevates the brand, it provides interesting interaction and engagement for the consumer, it has talk value and provides an entry point for dialog with the older segment of beer drinkers, who mainly drink beer at home.

It will be interesting to see how other brewers respond to this.


Posted by Ed Cotton At one time, Heineken was the UK's best selling lager, much of this success was down to Lowe Howard Spink's memorable advertising campaign and the tagline- "Refreshes the parts other beers can't reach" that was known by every Brit.

However, by the early 1990s, the brand had started to falter, it was too popular for its own good. It had become a part of cultural landcape becoming had a "British" lager. Heineken was no longer special any more and people knew it. The brand had become tarnished, it was precieved as being weak and watery and consequently lost ground to more fashionable imports. By 2003, sales had slipped to just 20% of peak volume.

In 2004, Heineken did something radical in response to the situation. It changed the product, scrapping the original brew that was made in England and started importing product from Holland, the same beer that is sold in 170 countries around the world. In so doing, it gave up $800 million in sales just to protect the integrity of the brand.

In 2005, the brand stopped advertising on television and pushed funds into point of sale and sponsorship.

Now in 2007, Heineken is making a comeback. It's returning to television after a two year break and is looking to bring the brand strategy in line with the rest of the world. The goal is to bring a "continental style of drinking" to the UK. In addition to TV advertising, the company created a mobile 400 seat cafe that it will take to events to reinforce the new positioning. It's also making sure that the product is served correctly  and has hired a team of auditors to evaluate the performance of 5,000 bars over the next 12 months.

It remains to be seen if the re-introduction of Heineken in the UK market will be a success. However, it's an illuminating case study that shows sometimes it's worth taking a sales hit to protect the integrity of the brand and that patience is important if you want to re-stage right.