Between the lines: 'All the best, you'll need it'

The launch this week of Steinlager Light points up several marketing challenges ahead for Lion Breweries.

Not only does it have to resell New Zealand on the benefits of low-alcohol ale; it also has to convince the drinking public that the product is so good that they should pay a premium price for it.

Perhaps most crucially, it is hitching the Steinlager brand to a different-tasting light beer, with the possibility of tainting the Steinlager brand if the campaign is anything less than a success.

There is no mystery why Lion decided to use the Steinlager moniker for the light product. It is a proven fact that light beers do better sporting well-known names than with standalone branding.

But one wonders if Steinlager's "manliness" quotient is enough to cancel out low-alcohol beer's "girly" image, given that the beer will ostensibly be marketed to both genders.

Steinlager has attempted to masculinise its image, despite still being widely perceived as a boat-shoed, 1980s yuppie beer. Marketing itself as the beer of manly sporting heroes is helping maintain some market share against wildly successful and "cool" imported brands Stella Artois and Heineken.

But will Steinlager's tenuous "hard" edge be endangered by Light's debut?

Also unhelpful to the Light product's quest: the reputation of low-alcohol beers as poor imitations of the real thing.

Former notable market entrants, including DB's Mako and Lion's McGavins, have disappeared after being rejected by drinkers as lacking grunt. Few other light ales have fared much better.

Theoretically, the product should appeal more in an age of tough drink-driving laws, subdued beer-drinking patterns and sophisticated brewing methods.

But the low-alcohol beer market stands at a measly 4.5 million litres, and it is hard to see that growing exponentially. Lion could be cannibalising its domination of the current "mainstream" light category with Light Ice, unless it manages to grow the overall popularity of the category.

Some say the light beer will never take off, because our 2.5 per cent "low" classification will never produce a proper-tasting beer.

But again, it is the continued perception of low-alcohol beer as feminine that remains the biggest hurdle for the product. Calling it premium is unlikely to enhance that image.

Ultimately, the beer-drinking market is - despite all pretensions to the contrary - a male domain. Female beer drinkers have contributed to the popularity of premium brands, but men are still firmly in the sights of brewers and their need to be affirmed as "hard men" remains the utmost challenge of the beer marketer.

Lion's challenge will be convincing the public that the archetypal "man's man" it continues to market its regular beers to is sufficiently secure in himself to take to what many believe to be an emasculated - and emasculating - brew.