Bring beer back to the table
AUGUST 2005
and dramatic innovations to improve the perception of beer in France and
create value. "Eight years ago, when I first started, we began by trying to
improve our position in the market. This has been done quite successfully; I
feel that we are stronger than ten years ago. But we came to the
conclusion three years ago that this was not enough, to be stronger in a
declining market, again not enough. We have to make sure we are building
volume and knowledge of the customer but we have to take initiatives in
order to change the market," says Didier Debrosse, Managing Director of
Heineken France. "We strongly believe if you do nothing than nothing will
happen, meaning that in ten years we'll lose 2 million hectos, maybe in
thirty we may be out of the country because we won't be selling any beer.
We're not going to let that happen."
So, armed with this mandate of change, his team has set out to create
a new philosophy in the beer category that they believe will revitalize the
segment. Starting more than five years ago, the Fleineken team in France
has been deliberately and vigorously building an image of beer that talks to
today's consumers in a language that is modern, surprising and varied in
approach. Along with a successful portfolio that includes successful brands
such as Desperados, Fleineken France has implemented a fine tuned
communication machine to make consumers look at beer in new ways.
Enter Culture Bière, the program, a strategy to take beer from mere
consumption to the art of tasting. Starting in 2000, they launched a
consumer magazine, Culture Bière, that became a stunning success. Within
a few years, this magazine has been taken in by one million households, a
feat that Fleineken competitors envy and enjoy the fruits of. "We lobby
for the beer category, all beers," says Goff-Lavielle, noting that the
magazine - while focusing on Fleineken France's portfolio - is actually
raising Gaullic respect for beer.
With the Culture Bière magazine launched, the team then started to
devise further elements. Soon the website came in 2002, attracting trendy
cyber viewers. By 2003 Arnaud Baudy d'Asson, Director of Media for
Brasseries Fleineken, a man with strong southern French features and a
girth that could throw trees, was formulating the idea for a physical
location with the name Culture Bière, a concept store that would put
Fleineken's premium name behind a premium location. "Of course for us
the Culture Biére Concept Store is a fantastic weapon to revitalise the beer
market," says Richard Weissend, Directeur Géneral Brasseries Fleineken.
"It's a place we can show everything, it's really avant garde," he continued
with a guarded smile. The Champs Elysées was, from the outset, a natural
location to showcase the gestalt of the whole project philosophy. High-level
beers; boutique items; restaurant; lounge; dance floor with an eighteen
metre bar: you name it and the Culture Bière Café and Concept Store
seems to have thought of it. In 2003 though, it must have seemed brave to
propose it to management.
Also that year the team came up with The Box: Tastes of Beer, four beers in
four colors that gave iconic status to the concept; the well-attended
exhibition Beers and Favors ("That was the turning point," says Goff-Lavielle
of that event) and La Bière Cöte Repas, a new ideology that says that you
can eat quality food and drink beer with it, a practically heretic stance. La
Bière Cöte Repas was the marketing answer to what Goff-Lavielle and
