Let There Be Beer! take 2

I recently went to a talk about the Let There Be Beer campaign. It's being re-launched soon, so we were given the low down on what they've done so far, the lessons learnt, and a taster of what's coming next.

In this country it was founded in June 2013, though I was surprise to hear that it's been run in other countries previously. It's funded by five global brewers: Heineken, Carlsberg, ABInBev, Molson Coors and SAB Miller, so I guess they have their eyes on the big picture.

The campaign is planned to last three years and has a number of aims:

• Creating awareness and excitement about beer
• Galvanising and uniting the industry
• Reminding customers of their love of beer
• Encourage new and lapsed customers to re-appraise and think about beer
• Get consumers to try new beers and new beer occasions
• Ultimately enhance the reputation of beer and grow the category

Though it's undoubtedly a good time for quality beer overall beer consumption is in decline. Not having telly the original campaign passed me by almost entirely, except for beer geeks whinging about it on twitter. The guy giving the talk did admit that mistakes were made, and things like suggesting Fosters should be paired with scallops lacked credibility. He also said they'd focused too much on brands produced by the funding companies, something they've since corrected, and the website certainly bears this out.

He continued saying that beer is seen as refreshing, relaxing and sociable, but has a problem in that it's perceived as being a low quality drink that lacks diversity and versatility.

A new campaign is to be launched on October 29th, and there are millions of pounds behind it so it will be interesting to see what they come up with. Apparently no brands will be mentioned in the next TV ad, but 14 styles of beer will. I suspect my fellow beer nerds will still put the boot in on twitter, but at least I'll know it out so I can look it up on youtube.