Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
880-897)
MR ANDY
FENNELL, MR
SIMON DAVIES,
MS DEBORAH
CARTER AND
MR GRAHAM
OAK
9 JULY 2009
Q880 Dr Taylor: Going back to the
Lambrini ads which we have mentioned before, it does look as if
the ones illustrated on page 21 show people younger than 25. Is
that not therefore a breach?
Mr Oak: First of all, this is
a website of the "Do the Lambrini" campaign. There are
two lots of pictures here. If we take the women in the middle,
they were used in the ad for "Do the Lambrini." Throughout
the process of creating that ad, we had both the script, pre-cleared
by Clearcast, and also all the cast. We had to submit the cast
to Clearcast and they were happy that those women both were over
25 and looked over 25. They had to fit both of those criteria.
Q881 Dr Taylor: And the little bit
on the left?
Mr Oak: The little bit on the
left refers to consumers that have downloaded their version of
the "Do the Lambrini" dance which was part of the website.
I cannot tell from the one at the top but someone made the point
earlier that the one at the bottom was downloaded on 15 June.
If that person looks under 18, what should be happening is when
they are uploaded there is a vetting process to say, "Do
the people uploading look 18?" If not, they should have been
taken off. I cannot really tell from the picture.
Q882 Dr Taylor: Because looks are
so difficult to judge, do you think this is a pretty useless bit
of the code?
Mr Oak: The code says that you
must look and be over 25. That is seven years above the legal
drinking age. We have submitted the cast to Clearcast and they
made their judgment on it. These are people who are judging advertising
every single day, so we submitted it to the experts to come back
with their view and tell us whether it was appropriate.
Q883 Dr Taylor: Can you turn back
to page 20? We raised this before. As you are JWT, I presume you
have no responsibility for this?
Mr Oak: This document predates
me joining Halewood. Although the reference is not on there, they
have clearly used TGI data. The age break that was referred to
earlier on which you were talking about is a standard age break
that would come from the TGI data. It is not something that we
are targeting to do. It is a piece of research mapping out ages,
demographics and lifestyle.
Q884 Dr Taylor: That is an age range
that is decided by TGI?
Mr Oak: It is a standard age break
that has come from a research company, not of our making.
Q885 Dr Taylor: In the previous session
we asked about the strap line, "Lambrini girls Just Wanna
Have Fun" which apparently is still being used. Are you going
to do anything to withdraw that?
Mr Oak: This was mentioned both
in the previous session and also in the session last week. I think
you said last week it was being used in multiple places, tube
trains, bus ends, taxis. I sit here and say that is not the case.
I believe you were misinformed last week when you said that. To
give you the chronology, in 2007 the Lambrini strap line was felt
to be unacceptable for TV and we have not used it on TV since.
We have used it on a very limited number of occasions in other
media based on the feedback that we have had from other regulatory
bodies. Where it currently exists at the moment is on a few company
vehicles and on the company website. That company website is the
Lambrini.co.uk website which is predominantly a trade website.
The ads that are there are there purely as reference and archive
material, no more than that. In the last six months there have
been fewer than 5,000 visitors to that site to view those ads.
Q886 Dr Taylor: You are confident
it is not widely used. I think last week somebody told us it was
on the back of Blackpool buses or something.
Mr Oak: No. That is incorrect.
It was on the back of a Blackpool tram back in 2006 and it has
not been on a tram since then.
Q887 Dr Taylor: You are quite clear
that that is not being used?
Mr Oak: The only places it exists
are on a few company vehicles and on a trade website, purely as
reference and archive material of old advertising for Lambrini.
We are not seeking to promote that strap line in TV form at all.
Q888 Dr Taylor: Would you agree with
the general feeling that control of TV and press advertisements
is much tighter than of internet advertising?
Mr Oak: We have heard today a
lot of discussion on things like age verification pages. I sit
here and say there is opportunity for that area to be tightened
up and improved so that we can all operate within guidelines that
we all feel comfortable with. None of us here today wants people
below the legal drinking age seeing our marketing campaigns. It
is just not in our interest to want that.
Q889 Sandra Gidley: Could you turn
to page 24, please? It is the Sidekick brief again. I just wondered
if you could explain what the image is all about really.
Mr Oak: This is from a chart in
2005 which again predates me by some time. It is purely setting
out an insight into drinking behaviour and a drinking society
in the UK. It is in no way suggesting that we condone this or
have marketed our product off the back of it. I think it is also
important at this point to give you some context around the Sidekick
brand. Sidekick was first produced as a pre-packaged shot by HP
Bulmer and we purchased it from them in 2003. At the time, the
backdrop, the social climate and the regulations were very different
to what they are now. Since then, we have done very little marketing
on the brand, very little to focus on the brand. In the last four
years, 2005 to 2008, it received £2,500 of advertising, which
is nothing in the scheme of things. In 2008, in recognition that
the brand was becoming increasingly unacceptable in its current
form, we did two things. One, we moved it into a 500 millilitre
bottle which has 7.25 units in it and works out at 80 pence a
unit. The second thing we did was we reduced the ABV by 30% from
22% down to 14.5%. At the back end of 2008 we worked with BJL,
as was mentioned earlier, about repositioning the brand, very
much looking to position it in terms of the way you could drink
the brand and a number of uses, so either over ice as a mixer
or as a long drink, or an addition to a cocktail. Currently 84%
of our sales are in the 500 millilitre bottle and the shot sales
that we do have are declining by 20%. We are not actively promoting
them at all.
Q890 Jim Dowd: Mr Fennell, you were
talking about a 2% beer?
Mr Fennell: That is correct.
Q891 Jim Dowd: It occurs to me simply
as a lay person that there is a trend in the industry to bring
in lower strength beers of late. Am I correct that if it has less
than 2% it is not classed as an alcoholic drink at all? It is
classed as a soft drink.
Mr Davies: I may not be 100% correct
on this but I believe that classification starts at 1.2%. It is
a lot less than 2%. We have found that beer at that alcoholic
strength really struggles to deliver on the product qualities.
It is just not a good enough beer at 2%.
Q892 Jim Dowd: Why do low alcohol
or alcohol free beers taste so bloody awful?
Mr Davies: I am afraid you would
have to ask a technical person that.
Q893 Jim Dowd: Is Kaliber one of
your brands? It used to be a Guinness brand.
Mr Fennell: It is.
Q894 Jim Dowd: That is the worst
of the lot. Have you any idea why?
Mr Fennell: Thank you. Having
some alcohol in the beer is part of what gives it its body. For
a really good answer, we could send something in from one of our
technical people.
Q895 Jim Dowd: As long as it is not
a bottle of Kaliber.
Mr Fennell: I think the technology
is starting to improve at around 2% to 3%. Both Molson Coors and
Diageo are now experimenting with beer brands at that sort of
ABV level. They have been slow to start but we are committed to
keep trying at them and give an alternative which tastes nice
but is a real alternative at lower alcohol levels.
Q896 Jim Dowd: I mention it because
obviously if people are to move away from alcohol and the alternatives
are just unpalatable clearly it is going to make it more difficult,
is it not? I am not quite sure how much effort commercially you
would put into redressing that.
Mr Fennell: We have put quite
a lot of effort into the design of the beers. Getting the beer
right is the first challenge. We are experimenting, doing test
marketing in the outlets and we are tracking the C2 tests as well.
My hope is that we can find a way of getting people really into
those. So far, we have not been that successful, to be honest.
Mr Davies: C2 is a project I started
personally about 10 years ago. The final recipe that we went to
market with I think was recipe number 285. It did take quite a
long time to get there.
Q897 Jim Dowd: Did you test it all
yourself?
Mr Davies: No, I did not. We have
to date invested more than £20 million in this project. I
have a personal belief in it. I think it is the right thing to
do.
Chairman: Could I thank all of you very
much indeed for coming along and helping us with this inquiry.
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