Colenso BBDO launches rebranding campaign for DB Export with 90-second spot and short film
October 7 2010, 12:47 pm | | 44 Comments
Colenso BBDO Auckland is celebrating the 50th anniversary of New Zealand beer, DB Export, with a 90-second commercial set in the 1960s telling the story of the beer’s creation by company founder, Morton Coutts as narrated by his barber.
Following the introduction of Arnold Nordmeyer’s Black Budget, whereby a 9 pence tax was imposed on imported beer, Coutts set out to create an export-quality beer at local prices. It went on to be named ‘The World’s Best Beer’ in 1968.
Also, on the revamped DB Breweries site, which goes live today, is a five-minute short film, ‘Beer, the untold story’ created by Revolver.
VIEW THE SPOT or click here to view the short film and other archival material.
44 Comments
Hi.
Could someone please give me the job number for that?
I’ll be needing to account for the precious time it took me to watch whatever it was I just watched.
Thanks.
I love beer and am interested in beer. But that story was way too long and just not interesting. I strongly doubt that the kids who drink export will relate to this.
Gave up at 3 hours 41 seconds.
Is the VO Roger?
They should have spent the money giving everyone in NZ a ticket to MOTAT to look at old shit for the day. Heaps more fun.
Agree. Lets rerun the ground breaking stuff saatchi did for export.
Reminds me of my History lectures at Uni. And why I’m not a Historian.
Well done to everyone involved in this epic exercise in entropy. indulgence anyone?
If your target market are old people who remember the six o’clock swill, the last tram up Queen Street and Johnny Devlin… then job well done. Just not too sure that the rest homes will agree to them buying your product.
I need a beer just to drown myself in now
Lucky the target market isn’t ad-cocks
Hats off. A beer ad with a bit of substance. And difference. Miles better than any Export wheelbarrow jackass shit previous. They could have just killed it slowl;y like Lion with Red, but instead they’re giving it a nudge. And no, I don’t drink beer.
Beer ads are meant to be fun. Like Beer.
well i think its bloody good… and if you don’t think so… check out what BC&F have done with a beer ad. ouch!
The grey paint I was watching got slightly less dark in the time it took to watch this.
Read the rationale over on Hazel’s blog… I personally don’t understand why they’re so hell-bent on saving Export Gold from the sheilas and barely legals. Meanwhile, I guarantee there’ll be someone in the DB innovation team striving manfully to come up with a way to get non-traditional beer drinkers (read: sheilas and barely legals) to give beer a go.
I always thought Export’s cross-gender appeal was a refreshing tonic in the face of the frankly misogynistic tropes that constitute most beer advertising. The biggest mistake DB made was putting all their beans behind the Tui juggernaut; hard to manage a portfolio of one.
I swear to god the next ad on this blog will have a fucking Hobbit gaying his way to Mordor.
“Pass the Pinot” … is that you Connan?
Anyone else notice the Export Gold brewery was the same as the Tui brewery…
Seriously, a nice change for Export, I hope it will do well.
Well done to DB for initiating a brave new strategy, and well done to Designworks in implementing it. BBDO has taken that great lead and turned it into a nice script. So full marks all round.
Anyone in adland who has ever come close to working on Export would have known the frustrations of that account. DB was transfixed for many years pushing the tired old guys+summer+girls+party combo. Everyone knew it was terrible. The results weren’t much better.
So, once again, well done. If this don’t work, then I suspect it’ll be curtains for Export. Its price-point will also be crucial. Remember, for only a few buck more, you can get something that tastes a lot better.
Personally, I can’t stand the stuff. Tastes like sweet water. I’ve moved on. Much like, I suspect, the majority of NZ beer drinkers.
This ad implies that before 1958, all NZ beer was worse than the beer that’s now the cheapest in the cooler at the supermarket.
Shame on your name, olden-times NZ.
Also – using a new font for every line is not good typography, unless you’re 9
This is so much better than Johnny Walker’s ‘The Man Who Walked Around The World.’ After that crappy ad, I thought it was impossible to tell the history of a company without being long-winded and boring. But this great ad proves otherwise.
Wait…stirke that. Reverse it.
7.20, that’s the funniest thing vie seen on this blog … Ever
I don’t have an opinion, I just come to this blog to read the funny words you have to type in at the bottom.So far today I have had rentmus woods, tonics butler and the
ishints, fricken brilliant, anyone need a band name or thinking of starting a small boutique agency in an inner city suburb?
A tad better than that Ranfurly Man Park crap.
lotto 150sec, DB export 90sec when with this recession end!!
What about doing something for DB Draught.
Well, I enjoyed it. I watched all of it. Even the interviews.
It’s a nice way of proving that this truly is an every mans beer.
Which is what most beer ads try to do, and end up clichéd and lame (like the man park from BCF).
Is that Jen in the background?
call me an old fashioned fool but it actually made me want to try the beer.
I hate it.
Sent from my saatchis office
Most of you need to stop being such scatty little b*tches. Why wouldn’t the ‘kids” who drink Xport not relate to it?
You old gits are so far removed from the “kids” you have no idea what might actually grab their attention.
Back to your mailers jerks.
Are we certain it’s not ol’ Rog on the v/o.
12.25 according to NBR it’s Roger on the v/o.
I really like it. Fresh story telling. Interesting and honest.
the rest of the country will not care.
i wanted colenso to prove they can do ads for all of nz, but ….
A short film = a long ad.
I’m thinking a lot of people here don’t realise this isn’t an Export Gold ad. Export Gold is a completely different beer, Export hasn’t been seen in years. Export Gold may well still have young people doing sporty things and taste like soapy water. I like this ad and will probably give it a go when I see it in store, it’s then up to the brewery as to if it tastes good enough to continue drinking. So in my humble opinion, this is a job done. For historic effect I’ll neck ten of them from 5 till 6 o’clock.
Weak.Flat. Unmemorable. Like the beer. Look at Carlton Slo-mo. Look at this. No contest.
I love it. At least Colenso have the balls to do different ads…
Brilliant!! A beautifully told tale of a man who brings down a tax-hungry government by inventing a beer… only in New Zealand! Clearly it doesn’t appeal to all those who just got out of ad school. No doubt the craft, sophistication and dry wit flew right over their heads.
Inspired casting for the VO. Looks like Rog has a new career ahead of him. Well done, Team Colenso… wished I’d done it.
inventing a beer? it’s called brewing you dipshit, still I s’pose you’re the kind of educated-by-the-internet wannabe intellectual that this is aimed it.
Enjoy that beer buddy you totally earned it, your nose is as brown as the bottle.
4:11 – you sound like a pleasant human. Wanna hang out some time and discuss how advertising is the most important thing in our lives?
How to lose a customer
The same weekend that the Labour Party was holding it’s conference in Auckland Dominion Breweries ran full page ads in the Sunday Star Times under the headline “How to lose an Election.” The main image in the add is of past Labour Party leader Arnold Nordmeyer. The labour Party is referred to as “the killjoy Labour Government”. Nordmeyer is referred to as “an enemy of fun’ and “old gorse-pockets Nordmeyer”.
The hero that these muddled adds are attempting to promote is Morton Coutts of DB Breweries. They try to present Coutts as the advocate for the working man, in fact Coutts lived in Morton’s Mansion which he had built next to the Waitemata brewery where the bathroom cost more that a state house.
Dave Shoemac, DB Export marketing manager, in a press release at the launch of this campaign of newspaper ads and associated five minute film describes Nordmeyer as a “‘puritanical bore’ who taxed the importation of the world’s best beers so heavily that no ordinary man could afford to drink them. After hearing news of the budget, the inventive Morton came up with a cunning plan to help average Kiwi beer drinkers who were outraged by the new tax,” Shoemack explains. “Morton quietly set about creating a beer that would not only avoid the import duty, but would also hold its own against the world’s best beers.
This is not correct. Coutts did not come up with his cunning plan after the tax on imported beers was introduced in 1959. It was collaborative research between Dominion Breweries and its largest competitor; New Zealand Breweries that led to the introduction of the Continuous Fermentation Process. This system was patented in 1956. The new process significantly reduced brewing times. Dominion breweries had been producing beer using this process for a year before the tax was introduced.
The newspaper ads describe Coutts as ‘visionary’. The real visionary was Arnold Nordmeyer. Working in Kurow in North Otago during the depression he had witnessed real hardship at an unemployed workers camp known as the Willows where unemployed families lived through freezing winters in tents and shacks made out of beaten out fuel cans. Nordmeyer would meet with the local schoolteacher Andrew Davidson and the town doctor Girvan McMillan and discuss solutions to the third world poverty they experienced at the Willows. It was at the doctor’s kitchen table that they wrote down the six simple points that were to become New Zealand’s future health system. By 1935 Nordmeyer was in Parliament where he was the architect of the 1938 social security act, which combined the introduction of a free-at-the-point-of-use health system with a comprehensive array of welfare benefits.
Shoemac and his confused storytellers simply ignore the fact that by taxing imported beer Nordmeyer was actually assisting the New Zealand owned brewery. DB is no longer a New Zealand company. It is now owned by Singapore based Asia Pacific Breweries.
i love this ad. what is the song?