When you have been, as I have, a long-term observer of the drinks scene, it is both hilarious and depressing to watch the same themes come round again every few years, as a new generation of marketers believes they have discovered the key to unlocking an under-served demographic. Thus it was with a sigh and a smile that I read the words: “SABMiller is to make female-friendly beers a key part of move to attract more consumers on more occasions.”

 

At least Nick Fell, marketing director at SABMiller, seems to recognise this is not a trivial task, with a simple solution, because he told analysts at a meeting in London in October that the answer to winning more women to beer drinking was not “hidden in the gift of some genius that can write 30-second TV adverts,” that “no one wants a pink beer, including ladies,” and that shifting the image of beer among females could take up to 20 years. 

 

But while suitably humble, this ignores the fact that brewers in the UK have been trying – unsuccessfully – to target women drinkers for three decades already, sometimes with, yes, pink beer, and the history of beer marketing is littered with the smoking wrecks of previous attempts to get females to drink more beer dating back to the 1980s. 

 

Older readers will remember Allied Lyons, once one of the “Big Six” giants that dominated the British brewing industry until the 1990s, owner of Tetley’s bitter, Double Diamond and Skol lager. They probably won’t remember Bleu de Brasserie, a “lager for women” Allied launched in 1986 with a huge marketing push, posters on the London Underground and the rest. It was meant to appeal specifically to female drinkers. It came in blue bottles, each with one of four different, stylish labels. And just like every attempt to market a specifically female beer since then, it sank a short time after its launch, disappearing within a couple of years.

 

Other pre-Millennium failures to find beers women would like included Lacons lager and lime in the late 1980s, from Whitbread, when it was still a brewer; Miller Clear, from 1993; Anu, a nitrogenated beer named for the “ancestral mother of the Celts”, launched in the United States in 1999 and a year later pushed out to an utterly uninterested Scotland; and Carling Rock Filtered Beer, launched in 1998 at “men and women in the 18 to 34 age range” and backed by a £5m ad campaign that was more money poured down the pissoir. There was also Whitbread’s disastrous GB lager, launched in 2000 with an appeal that was meant to be “unisex” but which never got further than its regional test markets.

 

In 2003, Paula Waters, Camra’s new woman chairman, used the Great British Beer Festival to urge big brewers to launch a beer specifically targeted at women. But as the beer writer Pete Brown pointed out at the time: “They already have, several times. Every time, they failed. The truth is that the world just doesn’t divide into pink and blue. Women like beer. More women could be persuaded to try beer. But women like beer in spite of, even because of, the fact that it it’s not aimed directly at them. They drink beer when they’re feeling a bit laddish, or just when the mood and the occasion are right. Similarly, wine producers did not have to go through a process of making their product macho to persuade men to drink it in ever-increasing numbers, they just positioned it so that blokes would find occasions when it was more appropriate than a pint. A beer aimed at women just wouldn’t feel right, like one of those creepy blokes who has no mates of his own gender.”

 

This wise observation failed to stop brewers continuing to pursue the mirage of the female-friendly beer. In 2004 Interbrew, as was, launched a beer in France called Extra Kriek, a version of a cherry beer already on the market in Belgium, with a recipe that was said to “take out the bitterness and accentuate its fruitiness”, this supposedly making it more attractive to women’s tastes. Interbrew said it had taken inspiration from the cosmetics sector in launching the product, which was packaged in red plastic film and marketed in women’s magazines under the slogan “At last, a beer for women”. A decade on, it has failed to release armies of kriek-drinking females. 

 

The following year, 2005 Anheuser-Busch brought out BE – “Bud Extra” – a version of Budweiser with caffeine, guarana and ginseng in a black glass bottle “aimed at both male and female drinkers”, described as having a flavour “reminiscent of beer with a raspberry, blackberry and cherry aroma that delivers a beer with a sweet taste”. Jim Gorczyca, then Budweiser’s UK marketing director, said: “It’s a new and refreshing choice for consumers.” Unfortunately the drink turned out to appeal to teenagers more than women, and was withdrawn in 2009 as part of a general clampdown on caffeinated alcoholic drinks.

 

The urge to try to find a female beer market was driven, of course, by the decline in the male beer market, with sales falling, and the observation that only 10% of women in the UK were regular beer drinkers. In 2007 Cobra attempted to capture the female beer market with the launch of Cobra Bite, a “fruit-flavoured premium lager range” in four varieties – sweet lime, blood orange, apple and lemongrass – aimed at 25 to 35-year-old women. It too was withdrawn after only a couple of years. Also in 2007, it was revealed that Heineken was testing a new “cider-based beverage” called Charli, aimed at women, and made from cider, barley malt and sparking water, with an abv of 5%. Marketing magazine wrote that it was being tested in bars in the Netherlands on tap and in bottles and “if successful, drinks industry observers expect it to roll out in the UK next summer.”

 

It wasn’t, and it didn’t.

 

Coors had two attempts at marketing pink beers in 2008: Kasteel Cru rosé, made “with a hint of elderflower and elderberry”, and Grolsch Rosé, made using cranberry juice. Both, like Cobra Bite, were soon gone. That did not stop the company trying again to make beer female-friendly. In 2009 it threatened to launch a “clear lager” as part of its “multi-million-pound project to increase the number of women who regularly drink beer”. The beer had an abv of 4% and was put through an ultra-filtering process that removed its colour. It was flavoured with green tea and dragonfruit, and “has a taste similar to an alcopop”. A spokeswoman for the brewer said: “We know that what turns some women off beer is the colour and the head, although they like the refreshing taste.” Apparently they didn’t like the taste of green tea and dragonfruit, though, because a year later Molson Coors was telling the marketing press that it was still going to launch the clear beer but it would now “taste more like a beer”. Six months on from that announcement, it was quietly revealed that the clear beer, which never even managed to get a name, had been shelved, on the grounds that it was “so unlike beer that it would fail to help the company’s ultimate goal of increasing the number of women drinking beer.”

 

Meanwhile another brewing giant, Carlsberg, was pursuing the uncatchable phantasm of the female beer drinker with Eve, a 3.1% abv “lightly sparkling product positioned somewhere between a lager and an RTD”, available in two flavours, passionfruit and lychee, trialed in Manchester in 2009 with a £500,000 ad campaign, rolled out nationally in March 2010 with a £3m ad campaign featuring Louise Redknapp and withdrawn, again, in 2012.

Despite these failures, late in 2010 Coors announced that it would be launching a new range of beers in the middle of 2011 aimed at the female market, after research lasting 18 months, with a recipe that “fights the concerns women have around drinking beer, such as bloating, weight gain and taste.” The new beer, Animee, had £1m spent on its development and another £2m on advertising. It was withdrawn in 2012 after less than a year, amid claims that Coors Light and Corona were selling more beer to women than Animee was.

 

Even so, in October 2012, despite the failure of Eve, the chief executive of Carlsberg, Jorgen Buhl Rasmussen, declared that he was convinced women were the next big growth market for beer, and announced that he had asked Carlsberg’s 130-strong research department to dream up new “innovations and concepts” to attract women, by offering sweeter-tasting beer, because “females don’t so much like the very bitter taste you have in beer.” Carlsberg was already attempting to flog something called Copenhagen, a “metrosexual beer for the beer hater”, launched in 2011. Buhl Rasmussen told the Sun newspaper that while the packaging was a success, “the taste still needs work to make it more appealing.” Or to translate from marketingspeak: looks lovely, tastes like orc urine.

 

Little or nothing has been heard of the Buhl Rasmussen initiative (or “metrosexual beer”) since, but here is SABMiller apparently convinced that it can finally find the pot of gold at the end of the female beer drinker rainbow. Nick Fell told the analysts that the drive to making beer more female-friendly will start within six months with smaller efforts, before bigger beer launches and campaigns come to the fore from 2016 onwards. “There will be failures”, SABMiller admitted, but Fell declared: “We’re confident of a shift in lager over the next five years to lager being more appropriate in mixed gender occasions. If we’re not seeing some movement in the next three to five years, at least in some markets, then we’re doing something wrong.”

 

Unfortunately for Fell, and SABMiller, I fear they are trying to solve the problem with entirely the wrong product. There probably IS, now, an opportunity to market beer to women: but not lager. Part of the problem is that the reasons women actually give for not liking beer are not the true reasons, or at least the whole reason. They might say: “It’s too bitter”, or “It’s too fattening”. But what they probably mean is: “I just don’t like the baggage that comes with being a woman drinking lager, the assumptions by too many people that you’re somehow not sophisticated, you’re unfeminine.” That’s not the case with craft beer, however: and if any beers are going to appeal to women, it will be versions of the hoppy, floral American pale ales and the like that have swept across the Atlantic and are now being brewed, not just by almost every microbrewer in Britain, but by increasing numbers of established brewers as well.

 

Ultimately, though, for the hospitality business, there may not be anything in this drive for the female beer drinker at all. If women drink more beer, they won’t be drinking wine, or any of the other “female-friendly” alcoholic beverages we already have. From a retailer’s viewpoint, it would be better for brewers to sell more to the customers they already have than spend millions chasing the mirage of the female beer drinker.

 

There is a new war in the retail landscape for consumers’ money – and it is being waged through increasing dwell times. The “stay longer, spend longer” trend is shaping the market and the role of food and beverage in this battle is significant.

There have been fundamental changes in the retail market over recent years, which have had a huge effect on the importance of multiple licensed retailers. Fostered by the recession, the biggest shift seen is the rise of true omni-channel. Consumers can now read reviews, conduct product and best-price research, complete transactions and then tweet or blog about their new purchase, all from the comfort of their sofa.

But it does not end there. True omni-channel is about all touchpoints of transaction and interaction. From showroom-style bricks and mortar stores to the explosion of “Click and Collect”, it has changed the way consumers engage with both local community hubs and out-of-town retail palaces. Both the role of the physical location, and the interaction with it, is completely transforming. This in turn is resulting in a repositioning of our high streets and shopping schemes. The spectrum ranges from the “experiential” destination trip at one end, grab-and-go convenience at the other and a mishmash of other visit types in the middle. And of course, while you cannot drink or dine online (at least not yet!), it is safe to say that a food and beverage offer that matches the needs of consumers within a high street or shopping scheme’s catchment can provide a huge part of this required experience.

Anyone who has visited the Orient in the Trafford Centre in Manchester will see this in action. Europe’s largest food hall is complemented with several leisure anchors which are strategically placed at the centre of the whole experience of the scheme. Particularly in light of the recent recession, leisure allows landlords to feel less exposed to the challenges faced by retailers and diversifies their risk. Leisure also attracts families, which can therefore have the benefit of positioning a scheme as a trading location right into the evening, as well as increasing footfall.

So with all these key changes in the market (both those we are seeing now, and those predicted in the future), is it right that food and beverage should be seen as one of the key saviours of the retail market, as shopping schemes are dusted off? What proof do we have that multiple licensed retailers will play an important role in the success of shopping schemes and high streets around the UK?

CACI’s Shopper Dimensions enables us to investigate this in detail. In the last two years CACI has conducted more than 200,000 exit interviews with shoppers in more than 275 surveys, across well over 100 retail locations. This gives some incredible insight into the influence of F&B on consumers’ wider behaviour and enables us to draw some conclusions on its significance to both dwell times and spending, as well as how it differs by region. By analysing all our national survey responses and breaking it down by those who spent in retail stores and dined, and those that did not, we get some fascinating insight.

Indexing against the average, we can see that those who dined spent on average 22% more than all of those who spent on retail. Even more significantly, the research shows that they spent 35% more than those who spent on retail and did not use catering.

In terms of dwell time for those who engaged with an F&B offer, it is even more telling, with a 56% greater dwell than average and a huge 81% greater than those that did not dine or drink on their shopping trip.

 

But what are the differences to these figures when considered by region? Operators certainly need to “mind the gap” when we compare London to the rest of the country. London shoppers spend 38% more on average, with dwell times being over 10% longer. This clearly reflects both the affluence of these shoppers and the unique way consumers interact with the London market when compared to other parts of the country. This can be explained by both the public transport infrastructure and the pure volume and variation of casual dining and pubs the capital has to offer. No other market has such a diverse offering that is engaged with in so many different consumer visits, and makes it so easy to commute in, out and around the city.

But who exactly are the Shopper-Diners that have the highest average spends on food and beverage when shopping? We can identify them by using Social Scene Acorn, which enables us to segment consumers from our extensive Shopper Dimensions survey in relation to their eating and drinking activities. Social Scene Acorn has been specifically tailored for clients who operate in the F&B market to help them identify and learn more about their customers.

The top three most lucrative Shopper-Diners, according to Social Scene Acorn, starts with the Luxurious Living (part of our wider Discerning Diners category), who spend 23% more on average on dining when shopping. Cosmopolitan Trend Setters, who are part of our City Socialisers category, have played a significant role in the rise of consumer economic confidence this year and are spending 32% more on average. This really shows how important the dining and retail market is to these young urban trendsetters. Finally, we have our Student Deals group, which is part of the wider Squeezed Spenders category. While by no means the most affluent; their more limited budgets cannot curtail this young group’s love of going out, and they spend 9% more on average.

So what does this all mean? Well, there is no doubt the statistics and analysis shows that the importance of F&B to developers, retailers and the high street must not be underestimated. Leisure ticks the box of providing enhanced customer experience, increasing dwell times and, critically, increasing both retail expenditure and conversion. This trend has already influenced developers in identifying an A3 target of circa 25% of shopping centre space in new efficient centres, from around 10% of previous years. This trend will only be compounded by the “space race” that is now kicking off.

CACI has calculated that there will be more than three million square metres of new shopping centre scheme space opening in the next five years nationally, including nearly a million square metres to be added in 2016 alone. South East development is leading the way, seeing a 600,000 sq m increase over the next few years, the West Midlands with half a million sq m and, interestingly, London is back in fourth place in the space race. The annual top of the charts analysis sees the West Midlands highest next year; the South East in 2016 and 2017, and the capital back to the top in terms of annual development space in 2018.

With potentially up to 25% of this new space being allocated to A3 usage, is this really sustainable? Even our high spending Shopper-Diners identified can only eat out so much.

The continuing rise of omni-channel and an over-spaced retail landscape, compounded by such a huge amount of new scheme space arriving across all regions, can bring both opportunities and threats. With the market becoming ever more competitive and complex, the need to understand the viability of markets, schemes and locations in the long term is now business-critical.

So the key question businesses need to answer is whether they truly understand the inevitable changes and impact that these market shifts will bring. Only if the answer is “yes” can the appropriate strategies be developed to not only adapt and survive, but to thrive.

I attended the Institute of Licensing (IoL) National Training Event in Birmingham last week; an excellent event where the broad-church approach of the IoL enables a hearing for many disparate points of view.

 

There were three sessions that I thought were particularly pertinent to the debate around alcohol policy and public health. The first was led by the excellent Stephen McGowan from TLT solicitors, and featured his experience as a solicitor practicing in Scotland, where “Protecting and improving public health” is a licensing objective. McGowan outlined the difficulties for licensing boards of making sense of this objective when considering premise licence applications and reviews. The key problem appears to be a disconnect between what a public health representative would consider to be “evidence”, and what a solicitor considers it to be. I bet!

 

Also speaking at this session was Clive Henn from Public Health England (PHE), who gave the standard rendition of old myths and Noble Lies about alcohol. In particular he repeated that old canard “alcohol is responsible for a million hospital admissions a year.” I was afforded the opportunity to point out that this figure (actually it’s 1.2 million) is not a count of the number of people admitted to hospital as a result of alcohol, but is based on an obscure methodology whereby hospital coding clerks record any medical condition that is wholly or partly attributable to alcohol for all hospital admissions, regardless of whether such conditions were the reason for the patient’s admission or not, and regardless of whether the person admitted even drank alcohol – about 15% of adults don’t. I put it to him that he knew this number wasn’t true and that he and his colleagues in PHE regard the repetition of this false statistic as a “Noble Lie”, one that they are justified in repeating because they do so in the name of a noble cause – saving us all from the demon drink.

 

I also questioned that other old myth – that alcohol is “associated with over 50 diseases” (some PHE representatives put the number at “over 65”). Associated with? This cunning use of words disguises the difference between causation and correlation. Some diseases, such as liver disease, are directly caused by excessive alcohol consumption, among other things, and there is a strong correlation with numerous other illnesses amongst those that drink alcohol to excess, but moderate consumption carries minuscule risks.

 

After the presentation I spoke with Henn and gave him a copy of my book Culture Wars and Moral Panic. I confess I felt a bit like Lex Luther handing the Kryptonite to Superman!

 

There were two sessions on super-strength alcohol bans. The first was delivered by Simon Aalders from Suffolk Drugs and Alcohol Action Team concerning its super-strength ban. Now, it was apparent that Aalders was very sincere in his efforts to help street drinkers and homeless people with alcohol problems, and I commend him for trying to help a group of people who are marginalised and written-off. But is the answer really to identify “problem drinks” and target licensed premises with voluntary super-strength bans that all too often turn out to be not that voluntary? As a retired police officer in the audience pointed out: surely it would be better to target the 30 or so street drinkers rather than the 148 off-licences in the area?

 

And we got to that old myth: availability drives consumption – if there were less shops selling alcohol there would be less opportunity for street drinkers to buy it. No Simon, it’s the other way round. In areas where there is a high demand for beverage alcohol there will be a large number of shops selling it. It’s no different for “alcohol shops” than for Polish food shops. Demand begets supply, not the other way round.

 

Our third session was delivered by the barrister Duncan Craig and the quietly impressive Walaiti Rathore from Fraser Brown, solicitors. Rathore gave us a case study of an application in respect of a convenience store in Nottingham where the licensing authority wanted to impose a super-strength ban. The condition, which had already been applied to a number of licences in the area, was not to sell beers, lagers or ciders above 5.6% ABV! But this applicant resisted the condition. The evidence given by Nottingham City Council was given in its capacity as a licensing authority and as a public health authority. And this brings us right back to the difference between what a public health representative regards as evidence and what a solicitor regards as evidence.

 

Nottingham City Council adopted the “throwing the kitchen sink at it” approach to evidence, quoting supposed national figures on health harms, high levels of crime and social deprivation in the area, low-income families in council housing and lots of existing off-licence provision. It was left to Walaiti to do what a good lawyer should do: unpack the issues and separate the relevant from the irrelevant; the factoids from the facts; the emotional from the rational. And then to say: now that we’ve done this, what evidence is there to support the contention that any of the licensing objectives would be undermined if there isn’t a super-strength ban in this store? Answer: precious little, and he won his case.

 

As Phillip Kolvin QC put it at another session: “What’s the largest ingredient in alcoholic beverages? Answer: politics!”