from a recent LinkedIn conversation with Mikkel Pilemand, Regional Marketing Director, Carlsberg Group...

Mikkel Pilemand:

Beer market decline? What are the reasons for this and how reverse trend? Many beer markets are seeing very slow growth or even decline. Has accelerated over recent years. In a market like Denmark consumers consume more wine... [Any] learnings on reasons for this trend and what activities companies can undertake in order to get beer market back to growth?

Russell Volckmann:

In Denmark and other countries, the trend is beer pubs  gradually disappear. Even in beer-renowned haunts like Ireland, wine bars quietly pop up in their place.

However, smaller beer producers seem to be staying ahead of the curve, despite the decreasing demand for beer overall. The boutique beers account for increasing market share. Relative to a volume beer producer declines, smaller brands are overtaking the market.

The beer market demographic changed so gradually over the past 5 years, that it took the beer industry off guard. During the same period, the wine industry has exploded. Including an economic downturn, wine markets actually increased by 20% in the US between 2005 and 2009.

Clearly, beer's fall from grace is a matter of perception, positioning, and branding:

Savvy wine producers will position and execute wine brands brilliantly—labeling, shelf differentiation, flavor profile—highly relevant to today's audiences. Beer brands, with few exceptions, rely on the same tired old ad techniques in hopes of salvaging brand declines.

Wine brands connect with audiences on both sensory and cognitive touchpoints. Beer brands are firing random darts in the form of ads that depict genders or society in a narrow light. Funny beer commercials, maybe... but "funny" does not necessarily equal sales.

Generally speaking, wine brands appeal to heritage aspects, tradition, understated elegance, storytelling, and/ or flavor profiles; Beer brands appeal to irrelevant and overdone social stereotypes—and/ or have lost the essence of their heritage qualities in story, messaging, and label. Large producer beer labeling & marks have become outdated and need an astutely planned rebrand.

What is a common theme here between both successful wine & successful boutique beer brands? Producers surgically place products (brand, market, shelf, visual, story, flavor profile) to appeal to a specific audience demographic, as audiences increasingly reject the feeling of "bulk" or "mass produced" or "generic", or "volume"... perceived or real. Wine & boutique beer brand differentiation usually exists with definitive brand space throughout extensions.

Many other beer brands also fail to differentiate, or else differentiate into dangerous territory. Differentiation through beer brand extensions sometimes downgrade and/ or cannibalize overlapping channels. Light beer is one easy cannibalization example. Miller, Bud, Michelob and other beer brands continue to experience light beer extensions eating away their premiere brands' market share. Overall association with the light beers in such close proximity on the shelf may also cause deterioration in overall brand perception. I'd like to see a focus group study on the perception aspect. Properly executed, the results should be very telling.

Compared to beer, wine sales and markets remained relatively stable for over the past 10 years. One reason for wine stability is that, despite competition between brands, regional wine alliances continually strive for collective benefit in terms of strategies and execution in order to help support a sustainable wine industry as a whole; Large & small producers participate, and allocate capital to grow the industry. By contrast, brewery alliances seem scattered, and unsupported by larger producers.

Finally, here's further reading... a good article (below) with a measure of truth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7103268.stm

Your thoughts?

Recently, someone asked me to step up to the plate and predict 2010 brand trends. Well, here are 10 stunningly accurate 2010 predictions from the branding crystal ball... enjoy!

(1) Marketing metrics will flourish in 2010. In 2011, marketers will begin to realize that the metrics alone will not salvage their failing brands. As quarterly upticks on marketing dashboards become real time,  marketing damage control teams will trip over themselves scrambling to be accountable for sales by the millisecond. Brands that survive the melee will have learned to lead by example and purpose rather than just cater to analytic trends of the moment... And/ or a deeper understanding of what those numbers imply. Not just living in the moment, but brands' future reasons for being. Nearly every demographic today is more concerned with their future than ever before in modern history.

(2) More financial & banking institutions, large & small, will fail—driven by (a) a consumer backlash against 29.9% credit card interest rates and other forms of legalized usury; (b) general job losses that force a new wave of foreclosures on traditionally secure demographics. Newer, more relevant bank brands emerge.

(3) Credit Cards as we know them will begin to disappear, replaced increasingly by prepaid debit cards. We'll get new names and brands for these.

(4) Accountability will kill many well-known and major brands—from automobiles to kids' toys. These brands must deliver on promise or become irrelevant, dying the slow death of commodity brands. Or the quick death of brands that misrepresent who they are. The divide between relevant brands and irrelevant brands will come to an apex in 2010. New players in a given brand space will be more authentic, more relevant, deliver in practice on all touchpoints, and gain market share—overwhelming the status quo brands, or absorbed by status quo brands trying to salvage themselves.

(5) Major US automobile companies will fail in the absence of further government bailouts. Governments will begin to examine buying back rights of way for trains and other alternative transportation modes. More relevant upstart auto/ transportation brands will get the attention they deserve.

See Brand Integrity Blog article, "Brand Demotorization" from January 2009:

http://www.webjam.com/brandintegrity/$brand_integrity_blog/2009/01/09/brand_demotorization

(6) Death of the barking 30-second commercial. Rise in brand advertising. Any medium. As audiences reach the boiling point in an over-saturated world of media, and the fact that only 6% of audiences believe an ad is telling the truth anyway—ad dollars will be pulled out of trad 30-second TV spots (or the ones reformatted for online) faster than you can say "buy it now". Experiential branding—virtual and real—will fill the void, along with branded efforts that offer real value (on physical, intangible, or emotional levels) in product, message, and experience.

(7) Facebook finally gets smarter about digital music/video distribution, aggregation, and streaming—doing a better job integrating artists, publishers, and fans. MySpace will never get this fast enough, despite building a brand around the music scene. MySpace continues to lose market share to Facebook. Once Facebook gets onboard with serious music & video integration, MySpace is left in the dust.

(8) Internet Video/ Broadcast makes Broadcast Television a novelty... in the same way that newspapers and magazines are folding due to content explosion on the Internet, so will the TV as we know it. See #6 above as one of several smoking guns.

(9) Store brands (house brands), like Trader Joe's (although not necessarily Trader Joe's store brands), sales will soar in 2010 throughout traditional commodities like food, energy, and other lower tier priced supplies. Manufacturer brands in these categories will need to offer a more than just a cute jingle to justify their existence in today's market.

(10) Branding will become increasingly important in 2010 from positioning, building, and management standpoints, as companies begin to realize the only way to sustainability is through holistic and kinetic brand integration. Brands will be in motion more, but increasingly so in order to stay true to their brands and relevant to audiences.

On the notion of being careful what we call authentic...

Adapted from a recent LinkedIn conversation on Brand 3.0.

I have an article for you that confronts a fuzzy line between authenticity and 'fauxthenticity'. Alicia Clegg points to a spectrum of degrees of authenticity in examining several brands:

http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=276

In the case of brands vis à vis authenticity, I think fantasy and reality enter a different contextual agreement with the mind—perhaps metaphorical authenticity.

For example, maybe I am eating a bar of chocolate. The packaging displays Mayan imagery, and a Mayan chocolate story. The chocolate flavor is based on Mayan chocolate recipe. We know that the Mayans have been gone for quite some time and had little to do with the New York based company that profers the product. However, the story behind the inspiration for this chocolate bar is authentic, and the Mayans truly made their version of chocolate, and this is one great tasting chocolate bar. If the story is authentic, and the product is authentic, then the metaphor is authentic. And for all practical purposes the entire brand experience is authentic. That the Jungian archetypes Mother Earth + Warrior + Patriarch  implied in the story connect with people is also authentic—even though the chocolate may be manufactured in Kansas City.

On the other hand, what about companies like Häagen-Dazs? The fictional name looks and sounds German, Dutch or maybe Scandinavian, although the company does not currently falsely claim that it is. Still it's simply great tasting ice cream. And the current company story is that simple. Authentic? The story is. The name? It's fictional and arguably misleading. However, the company developed name that is a metaphor for a feeling that is authentic. Here the lines of authentic vs. fauxthentic become blurred I think. Does this undermine the overall authenticity of Häagen-Dazs product and company brands? I'm not sure.

Your thoughts?

Branding: What Makes a Compelling Story? from Volckmann (& friends) on Vimeo.

How does a brand or business tell an authentic story that really matters—one that people relate to; find compelling? What is essential—yet missing—from many communications? Brand strategist Russell Volckmann interviews strategic story developer Colin Goedecke—Ten Owls Limited + Volckmann (& friends)—on shaping meaningful stories for both leading and emerging businesses.