Brewery faces bitter league truth

By Karen Scherer

Vodafone's decision to replace DB Bitter as the main sponsor of the Auckland Warriors has clearly come as a huge relief for DB.

The brewery has been honest about the fact that the deal has been a disaster, although its announcement was naturally couched in the gentlest terms.

"Our level of investment with the Warriors will now be commensurate with the size, volume and significance of the DB Bitter brand," it said.

Across at Lion, national marketing director Kevin Kenrick is rather less polite.

As a brand, DB Bitter has proved spectacularly unsuccessful, he says. However, he does not necessarily blame the Warriors' disappointing performance. The problem, he believes, was that DB chose an unknown brand to back an unknown team.

"What's actually happened in there is the league team has been a far stronger brand than the beer was. In that circumstance, the strongest brand is the one that dominates. Therefore, when the team was successful the brand was successful, and when the team struggled, the brand struggled."

Lion's sponsorship of the All Blacks through its Steinlager brand has proved more resilient, he claims, simply because the two brands are so well known.

"The All Blacks had a shocking year last year but that hasn't been detrimental to Steinlager and it hasn't been detrimental to the All Blacks because both brands have a rich history they can draw on."

DB's general manager of marketing, Alan Gourdie, disagrees. As an example, he cites the success of DB's Export Gold brand, despite its association with the fluctuating fortunes of the Auckland Blues rugby team.

"The fundamental issue was the branding and the performance of the Warriors over the past four to five years and the parallel performance of the DB Bitter brand.

If we put another brand on it, that brand wouldn't have benefited any more from the performance and the association."

Nevertheless, Mr Gourdie is not ruling out the possibility that DB may switch brands at some point. "For this year, the brand remains DB Bitter but in future we have the option to do that [switch brands] if we see fit."

Meanwhile, Vodafone is expected to pick up more sponsorship deals, in line with its commitments overseas. Its ambitions could see an even bigger shake-up than has already occurred over recent months.

Already this year, DB has announced it is taking over from Lion as a major sponsor of Wellington rugby. It will also sponsor the Wellington Hurricanes Super 12 team for the next three years.

According to Mr Kenrick, Lion is not unhappy about the deal. "We had an opportunity to sponsor it if we wanted to pay that sort of money but we didn't think it was worth it," he says.

Interestingly, the company was much more keen to be seen at Auckland's Hero Parade. After several years as a major sponsor, DB pulled out this year after Lion made the organisers a better offer.

According to Mr Gourdie, DB was reluctant to match Lion's "considerably greater bid," as it had already committed itself to international events such as the World Cup of Golf and the Heineken Open tennis tournament.

Both companies have significantly reduced the amount they spend on sponsorships in recent years, preferring to concentrate on doing fewer things better. In Lion's case, its funds available for sponsorship have been cut by half over the past four years. Casualties have included Taranaki rugby and provincial league teams.

"We have more options in terms of how we promote our brands now," says Mr Kenrick.

Nevertheless, he is critical of many of the proposals that turn up on his desk.

Most, he says, focus on brand awareness, when Lion's main brands already have a strong profile.

"We don't need sponsorship to get awareness, we need something in addition to that. If I look at the proposals that come in here each week, there are still a lot of them which I guess if I was a part of that organisation I would have written quite differently."

DB is also looking at fewer, better-quality deals. "The same thing is happening in rugby, where the unions themselves are becoming much bigger commercial entities, and they're starting to flow on their financial benefits to the smaller unions and the clubs and so on which used to be funded directly by the breweries," says Mr Gourdie.

"It's not all bad news for the smaller sporting organisations because there should be a flow-on effect."

Pictured: The advertising says loyal to the bitter end, but DB admits its Warriors' sponsorship was a disaster.