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Mark Stedman/RollingNews.ie

What Bulmers is doing to reverse its slipping cider sales

The drink is selling well in off-licences – but pubs are a challenge.

THE DRINKS GIANT that owns Bulmers plans to reverse its slipping cider sales – by prompting publicans to lay off the ice.

In an interview with Fora, Belinda Kelly, the Irish marketing director of publicly traded group C&C, said the cider is performing well in off-licences, but the pub trade is “where the challenges are”.

Annual sales at C&C’s Irish operation took a hit last financial year, dipping 4.4% to about €312 million during the 12 months to the end of February 2018.

The outfit’s operating profit also declined, dropping 6.7% to just over €40 million. Volume sales for the Bulmers brands fell by 6%.

The company blamed the dip on increased competition from international rivals and the loss of several wholesale accounts.

In pubs – where “the battle is on” – Bulmers pint bottles are performing well, but C&C is struggling when it comes to selling the drink on draught, Kelly said.

In a bid to reverse the decline, C&C – which also owns or distributes several alcoholic and soft drinks brands like Tennent’s lager and Finches Sparking Orange – is concentrating its Irish marketing efforts on so-called ‘in-outlet’ campaigns.

“We’re going back into the pubs and really trying to get our brand back onto the counter as well as in the fridge,” Kelly said.

Photo: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland C&C's Belinda Kelly Mark Stedman / Photocall Ireland Mark Stedman / Photocall Ireland / Photocall Ireland

Naturally, Bulmers has less visibility in a fridge than on a counter top, which falls within punters’ “decision corridor” – marketing lingo for the last three feet before the bar.

“It’s us and Orchards Thieves on draught,” Kelly said, referring to the cider brand launched by rival Heineken in 2015. “Some outlets will only want one cider (on tap). We’ve been going back in and trying to grow our distribution (in pubs).”

C&C’s on-the-ground sales team is conducting a shoe-leather campaign to convince pub owners to sell the cider on draught as well as in pint bottles. They’ll be arguing a peculiar business case for why pub owners should add a Bulmers tap to their arsenal.

“The bottle is always served over ice. It’s our iconic pack. Some people just don’t like Bulmers over ice, so the draught consumer can just have a draught without ice,” Kelly said.

Although Bulmers accounts for about 50% of the Irish cider market, Heineken’s Orchard Thieves has taken a decent slice of the pie since its launch three years ago.

According to 2017 data compiled by consumer insights group Kantar Worldpanel, the brand owns a near-15% share of the market, with its sales growing faster than the overall cider market. Bulmers’ sales, in contrast, are lagging behind the trend.

Events

Kelly has worked for the C&C Group for almost a decade and was appointed marketing director for the Republic and Northern Ireland two years ago.

Prior to joining C&C, Kelly spent eight years at the Irish wing of US behemoth Coca-Cola, an experience that helped inspire the annual Bulmers Forbidden Fruit music festival, which has taken place in Dublin every June bank holiday weekend since 2011.

“Coming from a background in Coca-Cola, experiential and events were a very big thing. We didn’t really have a music strategy (at C&C),” she said.

“We reached out to two different promoters to come up with a festival that would be our own. That’s where Forbidden Fruit came from.”

The beauty of events like Forbidden Fruit from a marketing perspective is that they create a year’s worth of social media fodder and other such ‘content’, Kelly said.

forbidden fruit Forbidden Fruit Sam Boal / Rollingnews.ie Sam Boal / Rollingnews.ie / Rollingnews.ie

The company sponsors a number of music festivals, including Body & Soul in Co Westmeath.

The bit that ties it all together is the Bulmers 100% Irish stage at each event, which serves as a showcase for up-and-coming artists – and a chance for C&C to push its brand.

The campaign came out around the same time the group revamped its marketing message for Bulmers last year.

The group spent €10 million on a campaign that saw it replace its long-running ‘time’ campaign with a more humorous marketing message that featured “sharp, witty observations of life in Ireland”, according to Kelly.

“The ‘time’ campaign worked extremely well for us. But a lot of the time we were talking about how the product was made. The key of the campaign last year was bringing the product into people’s lives,” she said.

New brands

The Bulmers rejig coincided with the launch of Outcider, a more ‘youthful’ cider that rivals Heineken’s Orchard Thieves. Kelly was instrumental in bringing the drink to market.

“Before Orchard Thieves came, Bulmers was always a brand that people loved. We got to be seen as slightly older when Orchard Thieves came in … We’d never done a sweet apple cider. That’s what Outcider was for; to capture that youthful market that’s looking for a sweeter cider.”

The C&C group owns and distributes several other cider brands, like Wyder’s in the US and fruit-flavoured Hornsby’s cider, which was introduced to the Irish market but “didn’t necessarily stick”.

“Hornsby’s worked OK in the off-trade, but it’s a slightly different cider than what the Irish consumer is used to,” Kelly said.

“The Irish consumer is very much about apple cider. Flavoured cider is still very small here, it’s only about 5-6% of the total market. I think there’s probably newer innovations that we can do, but it’ll be an apple cider innovation in the existing family of Bulmers.”

When asked whether C&C plans to test other foreign ciders in the Irish market, Kelly said the group’s UK-based Orchard Pig craft cider – which it acquired last year – is “something that we’ll look at for over here”.

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Written by Conor McMahon and posted on Fora.ie

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    Mute LeoVaradsCar
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    Jan 27th 2021, 1:16 PM

    I was born in August 1972 and placed by my birth mother in St. Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home two weeks after my birth.

    Within a few months, I was adopted by a fantastic family. My adoptive mother often told me how they got me. She and my adoptive father were brought into a big room full of cots at St. Patricks’ and given the chance to walk around and take their pick from the babies in the room. Apparently, I smiled at my adoptive mother as she looked into my cot and that’s what led to them choosing me. I had a good upbringing and count myself as very lucky. All I was told about my birth parents was that my mother was from a farming background and liked music. I was told nothing about my birth father.

    The stigma and shame of being an ‘illegitimate’ child have never left me. We adoptees were seen as the product of sin, tarnished children who were less than other ‘legitimate’ children. At school I was teased and bullied for being ‘illegitimate’ / adopted, by both the priests and other pupils – the priests at my school told other pupils that I was illegitimate (this came to light when I could not bring in my birth certificate, which the school needed for a reason which I can’t recall). I remember my adoptive mother talking about how a neighbour had told her she was amazed that she (my adoptive mother) could ‘take in’ a child who was born out of wedlock.

    In 1990, aged about 18, I started the process of tracing my birth mother. This was a slow process, often interrupted by my being a teenager and trying to weigh up conflicting loyalties. I felt that searching for my birth mother was being disloyal to my adoptive parents. When the Eastern Health Board wrote to my home address while I was university (despite my begging them never to write to my home address), my adoptive mother opened the letter (a very typical Irish mammy!). I remember sitting on the stairs of my rented home as she cried down the phone to me, asking me what she had done wrong. I will never forget this and I will never forgive the EHB for it.

    In time I slowly gathered more information about my history. A few years ago, I discovered that my adoption was illegal, that my birth parents were in fact married at the time I was given for adoption. I was told by the EHB that my birth mother (who I now know was not from a farming background and has no interest in music) signed an affidavit saying that she did not know who my father was, when in fact she was married to him. I don’t know what, if any, checks were done. I now know that the Eastern Health Board were aware for years that my adoption was illegal, but I was not told. This is unforgiveable. They chose to leave me to live with the stigma rather than tell me the truth. I cannot establish when the EHB became aware that the adoption was illegal (suspiciously, it is not recoded in my files) but the files show the EHB sought legal advice before telling me. Neither the EHB nor Tusla have answered my questions on when the EHB became aware that the adoption was illegal. Had I not submitted a Subject Access Request last year, I might never have known about this legal advice or the fact that the EHB were aware that the adoption was illegal long before I was told. I should also point out that when I was told about my adoption being illegal, I was asked there and then if I wanted to challenge the Adoption Order, but this was cushioned with ‘advice’ that my doing so would result in the EHB prosecuting my biological parents. I’ve dwelt on my illegal adoption for years; it has gnawed away at me and I remain of the belief that it was the result of church and state collusion. However, Tusla’s refusal to provide me with information means I cannot prove or dispel this belief.

    My birth parents remain married today and now have a number of other children, my younger siblings, who have no idea I even exist. During one of my meetings with the EHB many years ago, I was told my surname (something they later denied they had given me but where else could I have got it from!) and in another meeting they told me the county my birth parents live in. In turn, I was able to find my 5+ birth-siblings on various social media sites and today I occasionally look at what they are up to, look at their weddings, births etc, all the family events I have missed. It’s hard to explain to people what it’s like to grow up never seeing anyone who looks like you, never to hear people comment on how much you look like someone in your family, and then suddenly find pictures of people who do look like you.

    I met my birth father a number of years ago, my birth mother decided not to attend. He made it clear that any local community awareness of my existence would bring shame to his family (40+ years on!) and it was clear he had no interest in pursuing any kind of relationship because of this. I sent Christmas cards for a few years but they all were ignored. It felt like I had been rejected again.

    Last year, I sent a request to Tulsa to try to find out more about how I came to be adopted when my birth parents were married. Tulsa sent me copies of my files, most of which were so heavily redacted they were of almost no use. Many of my questions to Tusla remain unanswered – despite the fact that they have the information. They have repeatedly ignored questions I have put to them about how a child of a married couple could have been placed for adoption. The recent Mother and Baby Homes report makes no reference to illegal adoptions where the birth parents were married, yet I have met another person whose story is similar to mine, whose adoption was illegal because her birth parents were married when she was born.

    In a bid attempt to get to the truth, I am now considering challenging the validity of my adoption in the High Court – a big but necessary step so I can try to get to the truth and to remove the term ‘illegitimate’ from my records, and also to show that illegal adoptions did take place – there may be other people in Ireland who are unaware that their adoptions were illegal, simply because they are not allowed access to their files.

    The report found no evidence of domestic illegal adoptions, even though the Adoption Board, EHB/HSE and TUSLA all know of my case.

    I think the report was a whitewash.

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    Mute Aine O Connor
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    Jan 27th 2021, 4:03 PM

    @LeoVaradsCar: What happened to you was and still continues to be so unfair ,hurtful, cruel and unlawful. Good luck with your efforts to find justice.

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    Mute Paul Jude Redmond
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    Jan 27th 2021, 4:38 PM

    @LeoVaradsCar: many people don’t realise that you couldn’t be adopted in Ireland unless you were illegitimate

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    Mute LeoVaradsCar
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    Jan 27th 2021, 7:05 PM

    @Paul Jude Redmond: True, but sadly my biological parents were very much aware and therefore pretended they were not married…

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    Mute Helen Downey
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    Jan 30th 2021, 11:48 PM

    @LeoVaradsCar: thank you for sharing and I am so sorry you are experiencing this. I support you wholeheartedly and hope you get the answers you seek

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    Mute David Corrigan
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    Jan 27th 2021, 1:07 PM

    The quality of output from our political, legal and civil service lead investigations is very very poor. We definitely don’t get value for the vast amount of money that is put forward for such investigations.

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    Mute David Lawlor
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    Jan 27th 2021, 1:09 PM

    And the judge will say ‘no thank you’ and that’ll be the end of it because these committees are essentially toothless. Much like our tribunals of enquiry they are a waste of taxpayer money.

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    Mute Tommy Roche
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    Jan 27th 2021, 2:01 PM

    @David Lawlor: Toothless and a waste of taxpayer money they may be, but it’s worth remember back to a decade ago when the citizens of this country voted to have them remain toothless. The Oireachtas committee’s wanted the power to be more effective, but we told them to get stuffed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirtieth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_Bill_2011

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    Mute Dean
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    Jan 27th 2021, 1:10 PM

    Any party willing to disband the Catholic Church and seize all church properties from these Christians?

    79
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    Mute ÓDuibhír Abú
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    Jan 27th 2021, 2:08 PM

    @Dean: Dean, those churchs are not ; ‘Christian’. They may have some humanity, as a other humans. To find Christianity one would need to go to the source of it. It was founded by a carpenter named; Jesus, he and those who practiced Christianity with him were Hated by the Priests of that time, they were; Deemed to be unlettered and ordinary ( Jesus Diciples). Whereas those who didn’t want to be Hated made up a; Softer Christianity, a Christianity to; Tickle peoples ears, after 300 years the Roman Church appeared and through political and military alliances became powerful, from the Roman Church, branches of other churches appeared, but all from the same Tree, and not Christianity.

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    Mute Paul Jude Redmond
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    Jan 27th 2021, 4:42 PM

    @Dean: nope, no votes in it for them.

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    Mute Joseph Duggan
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    Jan 27th 2021, 1:07 PM

    What’s new in irelands tds@senators@their overlords the church are never wrong nothing changes

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    Mute Terri Corrigan
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    Jan 27th 2021, 3:58 PM

    Dean, it’s very easy to lay the blame on tbe RC church. However, only the state is responsible for its citizens. After 1973 the state partially showed some care by legislating for an allowance to be paid to single mothers.

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    Mute Michael Flynn
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    Jan 27th 2021, 4:25 PM

    A judicial review, or appeal to European Courts, is required to find out if evidence was ignored. Committee meetings aren’t worth a sh!te.

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    Mute Derek Carol Linster
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    Jan 27th 2021, 5:54 PM

    The 2015 Commission report has take over from the State Ministers to mislead & stop justice been done to the protestant Bethany & the Denny baby & Mother Home , of course the Bethany Home had my 22 years research to them & then back up by Dr Niall Meehan and Dr Sarah Anne Buckley & i was able to get her the 11 ledger of burials for over 200 years it got them all in one shot no researchers have ever been able to fine so much all cover up very nicely , you would need to digger up most of Dublin to fine any thing that could come close to getting to truth & where the book stop , had a lot of this proof & was saying for years who the blame lay & why we had a Min Holocaust who was paying for the Bethany Home was paying for there nurse children many 100′s was let die but the Church of Ireland & State & ICM. all ways it was not us gov. even those there was the 1908 children a.c.t.to protection Irish children , but the Irish State all look the other way it has take me 22 years to blow all this high sky Dr Anne Sarah Buckley of all of the stuff in the Ledgers that they never believe any one would ever see the light of day & they was not that far from been right , What a break we got we got , bur the commission turn down Sarah when she ask them did the want them I had all so offer them to them, but as they only want to keep all this up & hope people like me would not last muck longer, Job done Yes we like our Catholic Survivors have lost a lot of great people , but they & my lovely Wife Carol will want us to keep going no matter what , I Have A Dream That This Will Be No more , I Have A Dream Derek Linster

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    Mute Will Hamilton
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    Jan 31st 2021, 11:01 PM

    When the [Catholic] lawmakers are colluding with the perpetrators in the Catholic Church no one will ever face justice. Ireland is a Catholic Church State. There are not two separate entities. It’s an illusion. The idea of the separate State only kick in to protects the assets of the Church by sticking the taxpayers with the bill for crimes committed by the Pope’s perverts, sadists and baby traffickers.

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