Innovate
As the new-concept super bar, restaurant and lounge Culture
Bière opens along the Champs Élysées, Heineken France leads a
revolution to revive the beer category in their country. Armed
with various foils - Bière a Table, low alcohol beers, Culture
Bière - the Bastille of Gaul mentality that thinks only in wine
terms is being stormed anew.
Paris is in full summer swing: the tourists are swarming every monument
with photographic delight; the Parisians are packing for departure to the
south; the cars run amok along the wide largesse of the boulevards. The
world's most iconic city strains under its populace, both incoming and
outgoing.
Along the Champs Élysées, symbol of affluence and fashion for
centuries, the tableuax of these images is magnified times ten by the
added element of Bastille Day preparations being readied for July 14th, less
than a week away. Tricolor flags flap in the wind as stages are erected to
mark the day when France underwent a revolution, changing itself forever
more. It's the celebration of the year and all minds are anticipating the
party to come.
Tonight, however, thousands of those patriots are using their mouths to
celebrate another revolution, also being staged along the Champs Élysées.
July 7th saw the opening of Paris's newest and hottest nightlife spot,
Culture Bière Café and Concept Store, a venue that is like few others in a
city that celebrates its exclusivity. A modern fagade with four bands of
umber tones and a smart typography, Culture Biére is swanky, hip and as
cool a place as any self respecting European jetsetter could wish to be
seen in. "It's hot, I like what I'm seeing. I got bored of Paris the last few
years," sniffed Laurent Warin, a DJ and Parisian as he looks around Culture
Bière, exactly the kind of reactions the place wants to draw. "This is new,"
he says sucking back a Paco bottle of Heineken.
That's the critical statement and mentality that Heineken France is hoping
to elicit with its new strategies to revive the beer category in France, a
section of the beverage market that - along with wine and spirits - has
been slowly losing dominance. "As you know in France we have a real
problem of structural decline in the market. We lost 25% of the market
within the last 25 years. We have to relaunch and revitalise the horeca
sector," explains Corinne Goff-Lavielle, Communications Director for
Heineken France. That change has a multifaceted history starting with post-
1968 younger consumers who are eating less meals and more snacks;
strong government regulation on advertising (a 1991 law forbids producers
of alcoholic beverages to make advertisements that feature people or even
to sponsor events) and a vigorous campaign to deter drinking among a
population that traditionally considered the consumption of wine and
spirits a core French value. Breweries are almost required to make bold
