CREATIVE STRATEGY - Beck's engagement is a tough call in a crowded market

Meanwhile, drinks marketers are getting busy with the concept of 'engagement' - a jargony term which, like most of the marketing lexicon, only serves to confirm why most marketing professionals should not be let anywhere near a P/L, let alone a seat on the board of their PLC.

At first sight, to make a brand "engaging" is the purest tautology.

Unless I missed something, one of the main purposes of a brand is to be so engaging that we like it, remember it, and pay more for it than its rivals.

So it is not always clear what is meant by "engagement", unless it is another way of making the marketing budget more accountable.

In other words, the brand-owner wants to see our interaction with the product even as the tills are ringing.

And, I guess, there is a belief that this interaction will gather useful data, reinforce our positive attitudes towards a brand and bolster our future propensity to buy.  There may be research to back up this theory. 

Engagement is tricky.  After all, in many sectors, you are perfectly content to choose the damn thing and consume it. End of story.

You don't want a "relationship" with your bank (unless it's one where they swop their bonuses for your overdraft).  You can't be bothered with "word of mouth" about some wacky new snack.  And could you really care less about "engaging" with a bottle of German lager?  We'll see. 

What's more, Beck's cannot be benefiting much from our changing tastes and habits.  Wine continues to win converts, especially as an accompaniment to food (and in a total reverse of British public house tradition, it's now rare to find an ordinary pub that doesn't serve food).

Heavily marketed cider brands remain popular since Magners re-invented fermented apple juice.  And for habitual lager drinkers, Beck's faces heady competition at the taps from crates of competition: Amstel, Budvar, Carlsberg, Foster's, Hoegaarden, Kronenburg, Leffe, Peroni, Staropramen, Stella.

And yet, and yet ... back at the pub, as I order my pint of "Daleside Autumn Leaves", I can't help noticing (and yes, engaging with) the current Beck's campaign.

Only the bravest of clients would exchange their label for the artwork of contemporary bands HARD-FI and Ladyhawke.  It's not only attention-grabbing, but given Beck's long association with live events, entirely appropriate.

Visit the Beck's website and you're enticed into a world of art, music, interviews, gigs, comedy ... fun times, in short.

While the site itself could do with a major creative overhaul, it successfully re-associates the brand with all that's youthful and uplifting in metropolitan culture.

Make mine a Beck's. 

Simon S Kershaw is a creative consultant. A former creative director at Craik Jones, Kershaw writes a weekly column for marketingdirectmag.co.uk and the DM Bulletin.

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