XXXX Gold’s ‘four white guys on a beach’ to make way for diversity in tune with multicultural Australia
Lion will dump the ‘four white guys on a beach’ as the face of its best-selling XXXX Gold brand to better reflect the changing face of multicultural Australia, the chief marketing office of Lion has revealed.
Four white guys on a beach doesn’t reflect a changing Australia
Ben Slocombe, marketing director for Lion Beer Spirits and Wine Australia, said that despite the long heritage of the brand, the values of XXXX Gold would not stand the test of time as the population of Australia changed.
Lion recently moved XXXX Gold from its long-standing agency BMF, which created the long-running story of four white Aussie guys sending time away together on a beach to new agency Host.
Speaking at the Mumbrella 360 conference about the future of the great Aussie brand, Slocombe said the new brief for the brand would aim at repositioning it to speak to a broader audience.
“It’s exciting times because we’re seeing Australia, historically its ties are with Europe and of course the UK, but quite quickly that’s shifted to Asia which has quite interesting implications for beer,” Slocombe said.
“Take XXXX as an example. Relatively blokey, blue collar, good Aussie roots and values, and quite frankly those values won’t stand the test of time with the changing face of our demographic shift.”
He noted that one-in-five Australians aged 18-29 in five years time will have been born in an Asian country and 500 or 600 people were coming from China and India to settle each day.
“Historically, it’s been the Kiwis and the Brits and, to be honest, New Zealand and the UK have always been good for beer consumption, so we are finding that changing face of Australia is incredibly exciting and dynamic and it’s causing us to really look at a brand like XXXX and say ‘what is cast in stone, what are we never going to change, what’s the brand DNA and purpose of XXXX’.”
He said the company needed to consider just how far it was willing to go to reflect the diversity of the market.
“It will lead us to bolder, braver decisions on iconic brands in order to keep them strong.”
He said the campaign by BMF had built the narrative of the brand through its fishing tales and blokey stories.
“We were representing four caucasian blokes probably in their 30s or 40s and now we know that we need to shift that narrative on because it will only get us so far, so we are right in the midst at the moment of cracking a new creative idea for XXXX Gold to set it up for the next 10 years,” he said.
“Diversity and representing what is today’s Australia and where Australia now finds itself will be at the centrepiece of that.”
Dear Ben, sounds like a radical change & knee-jerk reaction to decades of decline in bog standard Aussie lagers.
Are you actually changing anything about the product to appeal to this so called “modern Australian male”?
You should be careful – you might be stuck with an idea that polarises your current loyal drinkers, and a product that no advertising campaign can ever make appealing to Aussies hailing from Chinese/Indian backgrounds.
Sounds like your incumbent media and creative agencies, both recently dumped, might have told you something similar.
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I think Bob Hoffman said it best when he told the story of the orange juice client who was going after the 50% of people who had never drunk orange juice. Bob worked out because it was because they hated it.
By alienating your target market and misrepresenting them, XXXX will begin falling in sales faster than the other brands that Lion has killed: TED is dying. New is collapsing. And Old is on life support.
The fact is, if anybody in Lion marketing says something is going to work, you know the polar opposite is true.
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From the people who brought you ‘the experience collectors’.
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Wow. A CMO offering an iconic brand on the alter of political correctness.
This must be the most spineless statements I’ve ever read. Only a brand appealing to white males would be ashamed of its own history and values, not to mention customers.
That said, I am looking forward to an Asian women, a disabled person, a Muslim and a trans person on a beach.
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But a muslim cannot drink alcohol, a slight Asian woman cannot drink as much as a 100kg XXXX tradie, transperson will be 50/50 on beer versus cocktails, and the poor disabled person cannot afford a beer because his health costs consume his budget.
Judging by the many Asians who want and admire whiter skin and blonde hair, maybe XXXX should stick with old ads.
We have the dumbest agendas nowadays
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An Irishman, a lesbian, a Buddhist and an Eskimo walk into a bar…
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“Relatively blokey, blue collar, good Aussie roots and values, and quite frankly those values won’t stand the test of time”
To those of us (non marketing directors) that work 50-60 hours a week making around $70,000 a year (which is, about $300,000 less than marketing directors?), Ben is telling us that our roots and values won’t stand the test of time because, you know, really, we aren’t good blokes with good values, we are all just a bunch of racists and homophobes and we only hang out with other white guys.
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Most brands operate in extremely competitive markets. The great thing about diversity of people and values is that it allows brands to differentiate by catering to different groups of people.
When you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to no one. Marketing 101, and something a CMO should know.
The PC crowd only drinks craft beer anyway, so XXXX really doesn’t stand a chance if they abandon their current ethos.
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What made you decide not to be racist anymore? Sales decline?
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That’s really something you just do; not write a press release about.
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I am no statistician, but I would guess that in the scheme of things, a director would be hard pressed to select and form a group of four persons representative of the ethnic mix of a country with a population of 20 million plus.
Does four beer drinking white guys exclude Asian, African and Aboriginal men and all women of any race from drinking beer?
Should we perhaps have an ad depicting a coach tour attending a picnic, then we could have women and men of a range of ethnic origins, gay and lesbian beer drinkers, trans gender and cross dressers, asexual and bisexual individuals, all having fun with a smaller group of total abstinence and abstemious fruit juice drinkers. the driver could be depicted drinking ginger beer with the female Asian driver of a second coach parked nearby.
When we meet and welcome new friends, we do not honour them by expunging or masking our own personalities and beliefs, in order to make them feel more comfortable and at home.
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Great news for CUB and Great Northern. Literally stole the XXXX ‘island time’ strategy and now have clear space to keep using it to bleed Lion in their heartland state.
I feel for BMF. Theirs was consistent and iconic work that ran for over a decade
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Froth on.
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The strategy is undercut slightly by having a white guy as the only person delivering the news. Is there not an ethnic person charged with running this change at Lion that could have been part of this release with a small quote? I assume there are some non-white guys working on the creative. It doesn’t say.
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Just to clarify, Ben’s comments were in response to a question from the audience at the Mumbrella 360 session on the Future of the Great Aussie Brand and not part of any PR activity by Lion.
Cheers
Simon