It’s a little embarrassing when you’ve been telling people for years that you’re the best beer in the world and you find out you’re not.
On Twitter.
From the people who’ve drunk it.
Many companies would bury the truth. If they even attempted a reformulation, it would most likely be housed in adspeak like, “made even better,” or “improved for your enjoyment”.
Not Carlsberg UK. Not its agency, Fold 7.
Carlsberg UK has admitted that it was probably not the best beer in the world and promised to fix that. In an ad campaign that includes films in which Carlsberg employees read out some of the tweeted appraisals of its product. Even if those tweets were written by the agency (and there’s no evidence they were), it’s a brave idea. Brave and brilliant. You probably want to taste the new beer and find out if it’s changed for the better. Carlsberg’s UK twitter account is helping that along.
James Joice, Fold7 managing partner, commented, “Today, the value of brand honesty to consumers is more powerful than ever. But it is still rare to see brands hold their hands up when they don’t live up to their promise. Carlsberg has not only been brave enough to do this but have done something about it.
The beer has also had a proper relaunch with a new recipe, visuals and name – Carlsberg Danish Pilsner. The brand has been given a new mission statement, pursuit of better beer, on new packaging. And Carlsberg has launched 330ml cans for the first time as well as snap packs, which use adhesive to hold the cans together, cutting plastic use by 50%.
The idea for the films comes from a segment called Mean Tweets on the US talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, in which guests on the show read out the horrible things people say about them. In the Carlsberg films the tweets include, “tastes like a puddle of fetid camel’s piss,” “tastes like a urinal cube that has been in the trough for a week,” “Carlsberg tastes like the rancid piss of Satan,” “Carlsberg tastes like a bitter divorce,” and “It’s like drinking the bathwater your nan died in”.
Liam Newton, Carlsberg UK vice president marketing, stated, “Drinker’s interest in mainstream lager has waned because, though the world has moved on, the mainstream category hasn’t.
“At Carlsberg UK, we lost our way. We focused on brewing quantity, not quality; we became one of the cheapest, not the best. In order to live up to our promise of being ‘probably the best beer in the world’, we had to start again. We’ve completely rebrewed Carlsberg from head to hop.”
