A British tippler who opts to drink beer at home spends as little as 79 pence—$1.22—for a pint. At a British nightclub, a pint usually goes for £6.

That simple math appeals to young British consumers (18- to 24-year-olds) suffering from 20 percent unemployment among their age group. A growing club scene in Britain once thrived on affluent young consumers. Now many of those clubgoers are on the dole.

Luminar Group Holdings, the U.K.'s largest club owner, has shut at least 11 venues since February. Its shares have dropped 74 percent this year. Brook Leisure Holdings, which operates in northern England, has had to close two clubs and a bar in the past four months. "This year has been particularly tough," says Cameron Leslie, co-founder and managing director of two London clubs, one of which he closed in June. "Undergraduates are not finding jobs, creating a huge strain on our core target market."

More info:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_37/b4194012951801.htm

Victoria Bitter will premiere the first television commercial from its latest marketing campaign entitled ‘Real’ on Sunday night (Sep 5).

Developed with agency Droga5 Sydney, the campaign will feature a number of executions including two television commercials.

‘Cry’ is the first TVC to hit television screens, airing nationally on Sunday evening and this will be accompanied by outdoor, print and digital advertising across the country.

More info:

http://www.theshout.com.au/2010/09/03/article/VB-Campaign-takes-Aim-at-Superficial-Society/DHJKCOWJIB.html

It is hard not to enjoy beer marketing. Even if you are not a marketer, this industry always offers creative advertising (particularly on TV) that is fun to watch and spends lots of money doing it. Every year at the Super Bowl, a good number of the Top 10 ads come from beer companies. In other venues beyond sports, beer advertising often promises good times, great parties and generally being able to escape from your daily life into a world of fun, travel and festivities.

When it comes to marketing strategy, however, it often seems like beer companies focus on being entertaining at the expense of being strategic. With campaigns that seem to change almost monthly and taglines that rarely last for more than a football season, it is easy to dismiss beer marketing as irresponsible spending to promote a high margin product. Is there more to beer advertising than 30 second eye candy and girls in bikinis? Here are a few popular marketing campaigns for beer - along with their corresponding marketing strategy that may yield some surprising lessons ...

1. Be Unique (Red Stripe Beer)

If you have ever had a Red Stripe beer from Jamaica, you know that it has a very unique bottle shape, shorter and stubbier than most others. The bottle sets the beer apart more than anything else, and this fact is brilliantly parodied in this ad featuring their central spokesperson - the Jamaican guy who loves nothing more than celebrating what beer can do with his trademark expression of Jamaican joy: "Hooray Beer!"

More info and videos:

http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2010/09/01/what-we-can-learn-internation-beer-advertising

When men cry to a Neil Diamond track in a beer ad you know there's been a seismic shift in society.That is exactly what happens in VB's latest ads, which go to air this weekend. For a brand that has mined the stereotypical image of masculine mateship for decades, it is a significant step.

VB's journey away from different iterations of its famous line ''A hard-earned thirst'' began last year with ''The Regulars'' ad which showed men (and women) of all shapes, sizes and sexual orientation, marching under different banners that demonstrated VB's credentials as the everyman's beer - a mantle that until 15 years ago it could legitimately claim, as roughly one in every three beers drunk in Australia was a VB; today it is about one in five.

Regardless of the decline, VB remains one of the country's best known and loved brands, about which just about everyone has an opinion. If ''The Regulars'' told us who drinks VB, this set of ads - titled ''Real'' - attempts to tell us why.

More info and video:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/good-lord-vbs-new-ad-makes-a-man-weep-20100902-14rst.html

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Media Release  

Scheduled to open late 2010 in the beautiful village of Bruthen will be East Gippsland’s first boutique micro brewery. Aiming to produce and sell fine Ales, Porters, and Pilsners they also intend to brew and offer for sale the occasional seasonal beer.

Visitors will be able to sample the selection of beers produced at the brewery onsite in the tasting room or relax and enjoy gourmet snacks within the complex or outside in the shady alfresco, taking in the views over the Tambo Valley.

Showcasing local wines, cheeses and farm produce will reinforce the commitment that the owners have to promoting regional products, through the gourmet snacks offered daily and later included on the restaurant menu.

Tours of the brewery and viewings of the brew-house and associated fermentation and maturation vessels will also be on offer. Cyclists on the East Gippsland Rail Trail will be able to quench their thirst and satisfy their appetite before continuing on the trail. With Bruthen being the lunch stop for many travellers this new venture will offer a choice not seen before in East Gippsland.

This boutique micro brewery will be a great addition for employment opportunities, tourism and general pleasure in the region.

Expecting to receive entries from more than 100 Australian brewed beers for judging, with gold, silver and bronze medals up for grabs; the offering will be a comprehensive snapshot of the quality of Australian brewing for the industry and a trustworthy purchasing guide for consumers.

Show Judge Brennan Fielding of Burleigh Brewing Co, who has been involved in judging competitions around the world said he was pleased Queensland now has its own competition

More info:

http://www.brewsnews.com.au/2010/08/new-awards-for-the-nations-best-brews/

For example, twenty years ago [the field of olfaction] made the most important discovery in the modern era of olfaction, which “was the identification and cloning of a large family of receptors in our noses that mediate the sense of smell that act like a lock. If you think of it, odor is a key, and when they fit together, the brain is clued in to the fact that this odor is out there somehow. And this identification of this large, large family of genes, a thousand of them in many animals, as many as 450 in us, mediates this smell.

This turns out to be “the largest gene family in the mammalian genome. The mammalian genome, typically, we think consists of about 25,000 genes. So in a mouse, it’s about 5 percent of the genes and even in us, it’s almost 2 percent. About one out of every 50 genes in your genome was devoted to your nose.”

More info:

http://www.realbeer.com/blog/?p=1641

Munich's famed frothy festival, Oktoberfest, may get all of the glory, but the destinations listed in ShermansTravel.com's roundup of cities for beer lovers proves that the world is full of destinations where the natives know - and love - their beer, and that are primed for sampling local brews all year long. So no matter how you say "cheers" - whether prost, na zdraví, kampai, or salúd - their list of the top cities for beer lovers will help you raise a glass around the globe. Text courtesy of ShermanTravel.com, adapted from "Top Cities for Beer Lovers."

More info:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/31/the-10-best-beer-cities-p_n_699108.html?ir=Food#s133119

Without naming a source, The Sunday Times reported that SABMiller (OTC: SBMRY.PK), the world's second-largest brewer, was preparing to purchase the highly profitable beer unit of Foster's Group, ahead of Foster's plans to demerge its beer and wine groups sometime early next year.

If true, this would be the latest shot in the global war for beer market dominance among such giants as Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD), Diageo (NYSE: DEO), and Molson Coors (NYSE: TAP), among a handful of others.

Whether it's true, the rumor highlights the fact that big brewers are thirsty for more market share right now. The year 2008 saw a flurry of consolidation activity in the developed markets, with companies making acquisitions, mergers, and joint ventures in order to find growth in synergies rather than sales.

More info:

http://www.fool.com/investing/international/2010/08/30/fosters-australian-for-more-market-share.aspx

But analysts says it's no more than froth, writes Brendan Peacock

Reports that SABMiller had taken advice from JPMorgan and Royal Bank of Scotland on acquiring the beer division of Foster's Group prompted a jump in the Australian company's share price to its highest level since 2008.

But analysts are sceptical about the takeover becoming reality.

Since the announcement in May that Foster's would demerge its wine and beer businesses, the rumour mill has involved a host of potential suitors, including Japan's Asahi Breweries for the beer operation.

More info:

http://www.timeslive.co.za/business/article626947.ece/SABMiller-Fosters-talk-swirls-around

http://brewersguild.org.nz/sites/brewersguild.org.nz/files/Liquorland%20BrewNZ%20Awards%202010%20Catalogue%20of%20Results.pdf

always @microbrewing