Pink Beer
From this opinion piece in The Globe and Mail regarding Molson-Coors’ strategy to get more women drinking beer with a pink..umm…lager, I guess:
“Women are an essential part of future growth for the beer industry and can no longer be ignored. We need to repair the reputation of beer among women by launching products that meet their needs.”
The 4% ABV beer is lightly sparkling and finely filtered with a delicious, fresh taste. Animée will be available in three variants: clear filtered , crisp rosé and zesty lemon. The new brand positioning aims to dispel the perception among women that all beers look and taste the same and that there is nothing to tell them apart. The positioning is supported by Animée’s unexpectedly sophisticated appearance and delicious, fresh taste.
Well, Molson, maybe if you took that opinion to heart and actually represented women in your beer commercials in a way other than scantily-clad, bleached-blonde, “man-venture weekend” supervisors, you’d find yourself sharing in some of the success smaller brewers are finding with female beer drinkers.
To be entirely honest, I see women in beer commercials serving a very limited role. If they’re not the supermodel supervisors of a weekend getaway aimed at men, they’re simply there. Eye candy at the cottage or bbq that don’t serve much of a role in the proceedings.
You can’t alienate a demographic with one commercial and win them over with another. It doesn’t work like that. Pink beer might get you a small segment of the market who will buy anything coloured pink, but you’re going to push away another (I suspect larger) market of women who just want to be treated like beer drinkers with pallets like anyone else.
And as for dispelling “the perception among women that all beers look and taste the same and that there is nothing to tell them apart”, I invite anyone of that opinion – man or woman – to join me at the pub. We’ll hunker down somewhere with several taps and sample glasses.
As some additional reading, there are actually lots of women that are involved in the brewing industry beyond drinking. Cheers!