By Andrew Starke
Pure Blonde has unveiled a new marketing strategy that will see both above- and below-the-line campaigns rolled out ahead of summer.
The Foster’s brand is presently Australia’s sixth best-selling beer with 4.5 percent of the market but has fifth-placed Tooheys Extra Dry (5.3 percent) firmly in it sights.
Sales of Pure Blonde, which was launched in September 2004, account for 58 percent of the low-carb segment of the beer market by value.
“Pure Blonde tapped into a trend that started overseas and we were first to successfully market a low carb beer in Australia,” said CUB group marketing manager premium beer,
Ben Summons.
“The success has been driven first by its great taste and image, and then there’s the fact that it’s low carb – the brewers spent a lot of time perfecting taste and the beer over delivered.”
Summons said the new campaign would look to continue this momentum by doing more of what has worked in the past ‘plus a few extras’.
A new 60 second Pure Blonde television commercial debuted last week and this will be supported by a raft of below-the-line activity including in-store prizes, gift-with-purchase and high impact point-of-sale.
Only the second commercial produced for the brand, the new TVC retains its “Brewtopia” links but is now set in the real world.
The contrast between the two worlds is again made apparent in typical irreverent Pure Blonde style when an everyday hero stumbles across an injured dove with a mysterious blue marking on its head.
“With ‘Dove Love’ we see ourselves creating the all important next instalment of the Pure Blonde mythology,” said Clemenger BBDO Melbourne executive creative director, James McGrath.
“As always it required the perfect balance between the purity, the mysterious and the perfection of ‘Brewtopia’ colliding head-on with the cynicism of our somewhat grubby and pragmatic world.”
The first commercial featured Blonde utopians who we meet when a truckie arrives to pick up a Pure Blonde delivery.
Complementing the new commercial will be summer music sponsorships and the launch of The Pond Pop Up Bar and Restaurant in Sydney.
Pure Blonde is available in bottles, cans and in draught and will enter the long neck market this November.
Pure Blonde is now CUB’s third biggest brand (in value terms) and is among the top 10 most popular beers in every state and territory – a feat Foster’s says has only previously been achieved by VB.