One Beer, Two Solitudes
Over the years, Labatt 50 campaigns have reflected the cultural differences in the beer’s two largest markets
From Marketing Online, May 5, 2003

This is a tale of two solitudes, one brand of beer and something called Envirogluv.

The story begins on March 6, 1950 when Labatt's "50" Anniversary Ale first debuted in Ontario. It was a decade when Dragnet was the most popular show on television, Marilyn Monroe was on every guy's mind and the hot car was a T-Bird.

Or at least, that was the world according to 50 drinkers. A recent Labatt promotional poster features the evolution of the 50 beer bottle over the decades, from the tall green bottle of the '60s (The Untouchables, Brigitte Bardot, Corvette) to the iconic stubby of the '70s (Hawaii Five-0, Farrah Fawcett, Mustang) to the small neck bottle of the '80s (Miami Vice, Bo Derek, DeLorean) and concluding with the modern long neck of the '90s (The X-Files, Cindy Crawford, Viper).

As this testosterone-driven version of "his"tory suggests, male concerns have remained constant in the past 50-odd years–at least according to beer marketers. Which is appropriate in the case of Labatt 50, since the taste of the liquid inside the bottle has remained consistent for over five decades.

And that's a problem–sort of. Beer store shelves no longer brim with ales (the exception being Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale). Since the early '80s, beer drinkers have shown an overwhelming preference for the lighter taste of lagers. And sales of 50–which was the best-selling beer in Canada from 1968 until 1979–have mirrored this taste-bud reconfiguration.

Which is why, in May 2002, Ontario beer drinkers greeted an old friend in a new amber bottle. The new design does away with a paper label entirely, painting organic-based polymer inks directly on the glass. This Envirogluv label can be washed off in a single cycle. It took Labatt three years to refine this technology–the patent for which is held by RevTech, a screen-printing company based in Edison, N.J.–and another six months was spent deciding on a brand to use Envirogluv upon.

A modest promotional campaign for 50 ensued–including billboards, an illuminated beer sign for bars, beer coasters and a few painted delivery trucks–featuring the clever but obvious slogan "Refuse To Be Labelled."

The new bottle and the ad campaign seem to be working. According to Nigel Miller, Labatt's public relations director in Toronto, 50 has declined steadily for almost 20 years in Ontario. Since the redesign, Miller says the slump has been arrested and sales have actually grown–in some markets significantly–indicating the reaction to the campaign has been good.

A key beer analyst agrees. "Yes, that's true of the Toronto market, which is impressive," says Bob Scott, the president of Ascot Marketing, which publishes the Toronto Beer Buying Monitor. "Certainly, it's the most competitive and fragmented market we've got in the country."

That explains the beer and the bottle, but what about the two solitudes? As it turns out, Quebec's love affair with 50 has remained more torrid over the years. According to Mike Bannister, marketing manager at Labatt Toronto, "The brand is really an anomaly. When we talk to Quebec 50 consumers, they believe it is a Quebec brand, and a Quebec-only brand. And when you talk to Ontario consumers, they believe it's an Ontario brand...both groups really feel the brand is rooted in their province."

To understand this difference, you need only to look at the main phone number for Labatt Quebec: 514-366-5050. The final four digits are no coincidence–the offices are located on 50 Labatt Avenue in LaSalle. As Denis Brault, senior brand manager for Labatt Quebec explains, "The beer was so popular (in the '60s) that when a licensee called for an order of beer, he didn't call Labatt, he called Labatt 50. The brand was so strong–it was the flagship of the company–that the 50 brand was stronger than Labatt itself."

The reasons for this were two-fold. When Labatt 50 first launched in Quebec, in the mid-'60s, "We didn't have a lot of brands. There were approximately four or five brands in the 1960s," explains Brault. "So it was easier to put the marketing machinery and advertising behind one or two brands." The second difference were the patriotic and mythologizing television ads that ran in Quebec during the beer's glory years, which generated a completely different dialogue between brand and consumer. In 1965, a series of ads starring Olivier Guimond, an extremely popular comedian with his own weekly show, featured the slogan "Lui y connait ça." The tag line is difficult to translate, roughly meaning "This guy knows..." with Guimond being "a real connoisseur of everything." Explains Brault, "He was the most popular guy in Quebec. An ordinary, blue-collar guy. Not pretentious, very funny, sympathetic and charming."

For the first time, Quebecers saw themselves reflected in advertising. It celebrated their professional accomplishments as Guimond interviewed chefs, policemen and golfers, among others. Even more important (or at least, patriotic) was the mid-'70s tag line "On est 6 millions, faut se parler." ("We are six million, we have to talk.") The recall on the tag line, which was also a jingle, was the highest ever seen in Quebec. Some claim it became an unofficial rallying cry for the Parti Québécois.

Meanwhile, English-Canadian ads for 50 were apolitical at best. A series of high-energy, colourful and frivolous commercials ran between 1966 and 1975. In all, there were 21 variations on the same visual and musical theme, as happy-go-lucky Labatt 50 troubadours–a healthy, outdoorsy, Canadian version of the Partridge Family–explored various portions of English Canada: See them camp. See them pick apples. See them visit Ontario Place, circa 1970–all the while singing about Labatt 50 in various musical styles, including funk-soul, '60s psychedelic pop, country-western, even a sea shanty, replete with accordion.

End result? A marked difference in the speed at which the beer has gone "flat" in the respective provinces. According to Nigel Miller, 50's share of the market is twice as big in Quebec as it is Ontario. The containers that hold the beer are also twice as big in La Belle Province. Most Montreal dépanneurs (corner stores) still offer 950 ml tins of Labatt 50, and if you're persistent enough, you'll find the Big Gulp of beer containers, a 1.18 litre bottle of "fiddy," as Montreal's anglo hipsters are fond of calling it.

* * *

Attracting the cool kids has happened almost by accident for Labatt 50, a beer that was rediscovered by young people sometime in the late 1990s, long before the redesign. In the fall of 1999, I chatted with a Labatt executive, mentioning that friends were bringing 50 to house parties knowing no one else would, and thus ensuring their beer wouldn't be stolen out of the fridge. It turned out Labatt was aware of this ironic reclamation of the brand, and admitted the company was loathe to fiddle with the delicate rebound it was enjoying. In the past year or two, Labatt 50 and Red Cap (the beer that reintroduced the stubby bottle in April 2002) have become popular choices at art openings and loft parties in Toronto. As Denis Brault puts it, "There's a new flirtation between (younger) consumers and the brand."

Certainly, at street level–or rather, at Toronto's Queen Street West level–the beer is doing well. But the fickle, fad-driven preferences of urban opinion leaders are notoriously difficult to control and maintain. For its part, Labatt Ontario is smart enough not to try and manicure this grassroots appeal. Explains Bannister: "We don't overtly go out and try and create a counterculture image, because I think in our category..."

"...that's not counterculture anymore," interrupts Miller.

In fact, appealing to trendsetters isn't the main goal of the redesign. "Our first priority was not to alienate the long-standing 50 consumers because they've been very loyal to the brand," explains Bannister. The key was to attract new consumers while keeping the oldsters happy.

"Labatt 50 had a niche here in Toronto, almost an anti-establishment niche in the marketplace, even before the restaging," says Ascot's Scott. "I think the restaging took advantage of that and took it to another level."

Labatt no doubt drew some lessons from Molson's experience with Black Label in the '80s, which had a similar niche. Molson discovered cool young people liked the old-fashioned black-and-red logo, but as Scott notes "then it got over-advertised and lost perhaps its niche and its special anti-establishment position it had found." This alienated both the newcomers and long-time consumers (who disliked the idea of "their" beer being promoted to young whippersnappers). Adds Scott, "Now Black Label is a price brand, so it's really not as relevant anymore. It's a very, very fine line between finding that niche and exploiting it, versus playing it too strongly."

Hence the restraint displayed by Labatt. As Bannister puts it, "You've got to try and get out of the way–which is very difficult for marketing people."

* * *

What this story omits is the taste of the beer in question. The importance of marketing and branding decisions for 50 underscores the fact that beer quality is rarely the deciding factor for consumers. According to Stephen Beaumont, author of The Great Canadian Beer Guide, Labatt 50 is "a lightly sweet and appley brew" that he awards one star out of a possible four. That said, in September 1998, Labatt 50 received a bronze medal in the Golden Ale/Canadian Style Ale category at the World Beer Cup held in Rio de Janeiro.

In defending the beer, Nigel Miller notes that "it's got a lot of bite to it. And those who like it swear by it... It's an ale, so people who like that kind of a beer say 'You know what? It's a real man's beer.' "

And yet, a few hundred kilometres east, you'll hear a completely different story. "With Ontario, the focus was on a male product, which was not the case for us. It was orientated to the professions," saysBrault. "It wasn't just a real beer for real men"–the current slogan in Ontario is "Just One of the Boys" –"women could recognize themselves in the Labatt 50 ads."

Given the history of debate and disagreement between francophones and anglophones, it seems somehow appropriate that two men, working for the same company, can offer differing interpretations of the same beer.