Garden of Delights

Grolsch has invested heavily in creating the perfect outdoor beer-drinking experience. Robyn Lewis met the team charged with conducting the arduous research

There are always those in our lives for whom nothing is quite good enough. “There’s always room for improvement,” they say, “it isn’t quite right,” or (the classic) “it isn’t perfect.” I know this because I am one of them. However, even I’ll admit there are some experiences in life that hit the mark – Sunday morning breakfast in bed for example, hearing a baby laugh or contemplating a satisfyingly icy cold lager, sitting in a beer garden at the end of a hot summer’s day. For some, however, even in this last, simplest, of pleasures there is room for improvement.

Andy Cray, brand director for Grolsch UK (though he has now moved onto Carling, also part of the Coors Brewers stable) and his colleague Neil Lewis, portfolio manager at the brewer, are two who surely fall into the pernickety, perfectionist camp. The two spent last year – and the new brand manager will be continuing the work this year – examining the outdoor drinking experience in the UK and trying to improve it, while simultaneously building the Grolsch brand in the on-trade. The work makes for some interesting reading in terms of branding and marketing in the on-premise environment.

With Grolsch being primarily an off-trade brand, the team began to focus on the next avenue for growth around two years ago. “The tie-up between Grolsch and outdoor drinking came through the need to develop the on-trade and the idea of creating a high-quality continental drinking experience with the brand in the UK, thus differentiating the brand,” explains Cray. “As a Dutch product, good quality and good execution are core values and so we began to look at how we could bring those elements to the on-trade. Obviously, the most significant improvement in the quality of outdoor drinking in the UK would be to make it more sunny,” he quips.

Positive promotion
However, without that power the team instead began to look at other avenues, building what they termed a “hierarchy of needs” framework. At the bottom of this pyramid was glassware, then staff education, sampling and, finally, environment. “So we started off with a huge investment in branded glassware, reacting to safety issues that are coming through and developing Safer-Than-PET glassware for mainstream outlets and also a different style of glass for style bars. We’ll be continuing this through 2006 as well,” Cray confirms. “The second step was staff education and so we created something called the Grolsch Professional draught dispenser. What we really wanted to do was to make pouring a beer something more than just factory work for staff, it’s about crafting a drink. It’s poured a few degrees cooler than usual, there’s a glass rinsing system attached and where we’ve installed this system we’ve seen up to a 50%
rise in sales.”

But this was just the start of the plan, the next step – looking at environment – was where the serious investment came. “We spent about £4m on just branded outdoor furniture, canopies, umbrellas, pavement-panels, etc,” explains Cray. “And more than that, we really sat down and thought about what would make this experience great? What would really raise the experience and differentiate the brand? All the time we want to make sure that every contact with the brand is positive, so we went further with the concept and looked at heating, lighting and TVs. We are careful not to over-brand, though; that’s important too.”

Top table
At the Zync bar in Cardiff (an Enterprise Inns pub) the experiment had stellar results. “There was joint investment in parasols, heaters, plasma screens and a temporary outdoor bar,” says Cray. “The bar reported greater footfall, dwell time and an improvement in its image with locals and it had a halo affect on other bars in Cardiff bringing new installations for us. We are not interested in just going in and getting a share of existing business, what we are aiming to do is to be a part of making that business better. The on-trade is competitive, you have to go the extra mile.” One of the key elements of the Cardiff success was a pioneering Grolsch waitress service scheme, which was also trialled across other outlets in Birmingham, London and Glasgow through last summer.

“This is a big part of the brand plan for this year now as well, as we found it had significant brand benefits and retailers were pleased with the upturn in cash sales they saw. Basically, what we did was to fund waitresses, wearing branded Grolsch T-shirts and aprons, to wait tables in the bars we were working with. Customers could only order Grolsch beer but could order wines and spirits as well,” Cray explains. “The feedback was incredible, with the waitresses reporting that customers switched to Grolsch to take advantage of the table service, several consumers tried Grolsch for the first time through being offered it in this way, and there was no adverse reaction from consumers to Grolsch being the only lager offered. What came through clearly in the feedback was that the drinking experience was improved by table service and dwell time increased.”

With the smoking ban now imminent in the UK the team must be congratulating themselves on their forward thinking since, if the Dublin experience is anything to go by, claiming a stake in the outdoor drinking experience early on, could prove very lucrative over the next few years. “Absolutely, and we’ve also been very pro-active in pushing Grolsch with food, too, which is also part of this cultural shift and, of course, part of the whole continental drinking experience as well. This is something that we have started in the off-trade already with the 1.5 litre bottle, which is great for sharing, and we’ve put recipes for foods like Tiger prawns with chilli lime dip and paprika-dusted chicken strips that match well with the taste of Grolsch on the neck collar as a promotion as well. In terms of the on-trade we’ve not capitalised on this yet but the swing-top bottle in larger sizes, with branded ice-buckets, is definitely an opportunity we have to work with,” he says.

Barge-ing in

And that isn’t all. As part of the wider campaign to bring a truly Dutch experience to the on-trade the Grolsch team brought a fully branded canal barge to the UK to entertain customers and trade. “It’s called Jenneken, after the wife of the brewer who first created the recipe for Grolsch, and it provides a stylish, continental drinking experience,” Lewis (portfolio manager at Coors) chips in. “Premium lager is a more and more competitive arena and we need to stand out. In order to grow the on-trade presence of Grolsch we need to appeal to our own sales force, to potential customers, to bar staff and to the media. If you are selling a brand you need an experience and Jenneken is part of that.”

Moored initially at Canary Wharf in London last summer, this year will see the barge targeting key cities around the UK and back to Canary Wharf next summer.

“We have ambitious plans for the brand and we want to inspire and convince our customers to sell it,” Lewis continues. “Using Jenneken we can give our sales team the product knowledge, brand legends and perfect pour skills; showcase our range of dispense options and bespoke fridge, tailoring the right option for each bar and, therefore, win more and better business.”

As for further plans for 2006, thus far the team is shy about giving away too many details. “There is lots of activity planned for the coming months. However, it’s too early at this stage to be talking about the detail,” they say. There’s obviously a new brand director on board, who will be clearly hoping that his first summer in the job will be as successful as last year’s for the brand, especially with the opportunities for beer consumption that the World Cup brings. He’d better be one of those pernickety perfectionists as well, since I’m expecting a whole lot more from my beer garden these days.

Summer festivals

The Summer Set – DJ sets held in bars and live music events in London – has been sponsored by Grolsch for three years running and has become another key element of the on-trade strategy for the brand. “The idea was that this music concert was Better Than Your Average Gig,” explains Cray. “We wanted to take all the good things from an outdoor music event and make them better. It ties in with the brand values of good quality and good execution – doing things the Dutch way. The location for the big live event [Somerset House] was unique. We made sure there were plenty of clean loos, we put in enough beer tents to ensure there wasn’t lots of queuing and basically tried to make sure every contact with the brand was positive,” he says. The team worked with Urbium and Fullers venues for the DJ events, which were a prelude to the August live music events at Somerset House.

Key Stats
1. On average, Grolsch has gained over 3,000 new customers over the last 12 months*
2. Grolsch on-trade packaged volume increased by 7.1% last year, outperforming many of its leading competitors’ packaged volume**
3. Last year Grolsch invested £14m in marketing spend, not including price promotions

*ACNielsen On-Trade Audit, GB, 12-month average distribution, Sep 05
**AC Nielsen On-Trade Audit, GB, MAT Sep 05

db  April 2006