‘Average at best, average at worst’: Tooheys Extra Dry’s new brand platform embraces ordinariness
“It’s kind of like the beer you settle for when you’ve run outta the good stuff. You know, you’re at a mate’s barbecue or something, and you go check the esky and there’s nothing left but a couple of Extra Drys, just floating there in the ice. And you’re thinking to yourself, you know ‘Who brought these?’ But you rip into ’em anyway.”
Tooheys Extra Dry’s new brand platform celebrates being ‘Proudly Ordinary’, launching with the Betoota Advocate and Big Lez roasting the beer across film, digital, social, and out of home.
“I don’t really drink the stuff that much if I’m being honest, but you know a cashie’s a cashie, am I right?” the ad, a play on Big Lez’s The Mike Nolan Show, continues.
The brand’s parent company, Lion, said being ordinary is Tooheys Extra Dry’s “truth”.
“Working with 72 and Sunny and our wonderful partners meant really owning our brand truth – celebrating the proudly ordinary – and we’re thrilled seeing it out in the world,” said Lion’s brand director, Amy Darvill.
72 and Sunny added that the brand knows what it is: an ordinary beer.
“We wanted to embrace and amplify what was already happening in culture; Tooheys Extra Dry was being called out as an ordinary beer, which is the truth,” explained head of product Luke Martin.
“The brand knows what it is, and what it isn’t, there’s no BS, it is proud to be ordinary. It’s not every day you get a client partner confident enough to create this type of campaign and it’s been an awesome experience working alongside the team at Lion to get this project out into the world.”
Big Lez thanked Tooheys Extra Dry for the “cashie” on Instagram
The platform will continue being promoted until the end of the year, with further collaborations with Inspired Unemployed, Struthless and Gocsy to come.
Credits:
Client: Tooheys Extra Dry / Lion
Creative: 72andSunny
Sydney media: UM
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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Tooheys Extra Dry
Strong and simple platform, very well done to Lion and 72 for having the bravery to eschew more traditional beers ads and bring something new to the industry.
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Love it when a brand knows who they are/what they stand for and embraces it. Authenticity stands out!
Absolutely brilliant
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What an epic fail. How would you drive differentiation in a diverse market than call you own product “Average” and utilise a narrow reach Insta channel. Headline should have read “Hipster smugness cant flog Lion brews”.
Really?
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Shouldn’t this be the strategy for Tooheys New rather than Extra Dry? Or are Lion now saying that all Toohey’s products are crap?
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Never sell off a negative. No one aspires downwards.
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definitely brave and definitely accurate and I think the executional style is fun, but it really is a beer you leave til last in the esky at a barbie and I’m not sure re-inforcing that will help sell any more
good to see a client take a risk though
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Celebrating average is a decent strategy when it’s your customers you’re talking about. The product on the other hand…
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What a load of rubbish – the creative industry talking to itself in an echo chamber. No real Australian beer drinker will like this rubbish. Shows how out of touch the industry is. Lion lost the plot years ago and the rubbish continues.
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Lets try and talk fundamentals.
Recessionary environment, lower bulk sales however personal consumption up. Wage growth low, unemployment high so “luxury” purchases slow.
The justification would have been people are currently drinking more lets publicise a lower cost, “average” product to remind people of the alternative to craft beer. Is the price point of 10%-15% going to drive consumption from this advertising. Brave.
If it is in the bottom of the esky after a Sunday Session you are most likely not going to purchase it for yourself…
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Hey Brittney and team Mumbrella, can you please follow up in 3 months with agency and the client to see what the outcome has been.
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The brand must be on life support to get sign off on this last throw of the dice. When your research is telling you the product is shite, it’s time to change the product not embrace the ‘brand truth’.
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It’s brave, and I so wish this would work. I really do. I love honesty! But I can’t see how this would sell any more beer.
At the most basic level of its positioning, any brand has to deliver on:
a) relevancy in the category
b) differentiation vs. its competitors
If you look at the functional and psychological drivers in the beer category, being ‘average’ is not in the top 20. Nobody buys beer for its averageness per se.
Unfortunately being ‘average’ is not differentiating either – it’s the opposite, by definition. And VB’s kinda done something similar with ‘the regulars’. But at least they celebrated average people (making average Joe look interesting) rather than calling their beer average.
I’d be genuinely interested to see results as well (3 months is probably a bit early, but say in 6-12). To me it looks like a Hail Mary for a struggling brand – a creatively brave and interesting thought, which does not have a valid strategic foundation though.
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