Magner’s pear cider
I’ve been intrigued by the strategy behind this campaign since I first saw the huge billboards denying that any other fruit was used in their pear cider.
To be honest, it hadn’t occurred to me that any other fruit would be used in their pear cider. And isn’t it usually the nasty ingredients like preservatives and added sugars that brands spend money trying to deny?
So Magners seem to have taken a radical new approach with this campaign. But to have come up with such a strange advertising strategy their marketing team will have needed facts. I suspect these facts were:
1. Any fruit other than pears are bad
2. Cider drinkers suspect Magners of secretly sneaking other fruit into their pear cider.
I would love to have seen the focus group that that led to that insight…
[The first focus group of the night is in session. The group are being shown product shots of cider bottles. The green ones, which supposedly contain pear cider, are causing considerable consternation…]
Dave (40s, regular cider drinker, runs his own scaffolding firm): “I don’t trust that green one. I know what these big companies are like. They’ll have stuck strawberries or sumfin in there and not told us.”
(Showing some aptitude for branding, he adds): “Kiwi fruit most likely cos of the bottle being green. Anyways, I ain’t buying it.”
Leslie (40s, occassional cider drinker and clearly quite taken with Dave): “Yeah, that’s true that is. If they’re stupid enough to put pears in there who says they’ll stop there. I hate bananas, there’s none of them in there is there? I wouldn’t buy that no way.”
Research invidulator (holding up another board): What about if the headline said something like “the only fruit in our pear cider is pear”?
Leslie looks at Dave questioningly.
Dave (tilting his head slightly to one side): “Yeah that’d do it.”
From behind the two-way mirror you can just hear the gentle clatter of biros being put down, chairs being pushed back and beer being opened. Job done.
