The Great British Beer Blog

British ale has undergone somewhat of a renaissance of late. Bottled ales are cropping up on supermarket shelves and, assisted by a generous duty relief for producers of less than 3,000 barrels a year, microbreweries are cropping up all over the place. The big trend for provenance and authenticity are being cited as main reasons and industry experts are predicting a further 50 new small breweries opening around the country this year. 

Conversely, the UK beer market has shrank by 7% last year and we're losing 25 pubs a week. On the other hand, Phipps client Sainsbury’s, has seen a 7% year-on-year growth in bottled beers this year. Capitalising on a renewed consumer appetite for real ales, Sainsbury’s earlier this year also launched a nationwide competition to find Britain’s best independently produced beer. ‘The Great British Beer Hunt’ drew entries from all over the country by brewers experimenting with new styles and reviving old ones all eager to get their beers out to a wider market.

Phipps is of course well known for its work in the wine industry but on working with Sainsbury’s on the Great British Beer Hunt we’ve discovered that beer is every bit as complex as wine and the wide array of media that have covered the event seem to agree.

Posted by Becky Erwood

What Circulation Figures Say About Us

When The Guardian published the latest list of the Top 100 paid-for magazines we at Phipps couldn’t help drawing some conclusions on how these figures reflect the social trends of the year and consumers and their buying habits.

Forget House Beautiful, think House Maintenance

The rise in the circulation of Good Housekeeping (up 1.9%) and BBC Gardeners World (up 3.3%) suggests we’re keeping our houses clean and fingers green. The recession and stamp duty has forced home owners to stay put, and invest in their current home rather than putting the For Sale sign up. We’re less concerned with making our house look ready for buyers and more concerned with house maintenance and adding actual value to our homes while riding out the economic storm.

Nation of Economists

We know that in a recession the public pays more attention to the economy. This is certainly supported by The Economist’s circulation figure (up 6.4%) and The Week (up 3.2%), satisfying our need to understand what’s going on around us and making us better informed. It also explains why trashy celeb mags are on their way out. Heat magazine’s circulation figure is down a whopping 21.8% and while we could argue that the typical Heat reader has grown out of the mag, we also think that the fall in circulation figures of other celeb based weeklies such as New, Closer and Star show we’re less bothered about reaching into our recession-battled pockets to splash out on the latest z-list gossip.

TV event of the decade

The Kate Middleton wedding (who cared what Prince William was wearing?) led to a huge 26.8% increase in Hello!’s circulation. Having been the biggest TV event in history it’s not totally surprising that TV guides are on their way up. TV Choice topped the Top 100 list with a circulation of just under 1.5 million (up 3.5% year on year). What’s on TV follows as a close second, with an even higher year-on-year increase of circulation at 5.4% and Total TV Guide has a rise in circ of 7.7%. With less disposable income, this year was definitely the year for TV and we wonder if the Royal Wedding has catapulted us into a nation of couch potatoes.

Posted by Rachael Everitt