Carlton Natural ‘Superior Dry Lager’ Poster

In 2010 CUB released the latest of its mainstream beer offerings under its Carlton brand. Carlton Natural ticked all of the current must-have boxes. According to the brewery’s press release it was “targeted towards 25 to 30 year old men looking for easy-drinking, crisp dry flavour in a beer that is low-carb and brewed with natural ingredients”. Fosters (parent company at that time) says their research showed “the flavour of the beer hit every sweet spot and the packaging every quality cue.” This was a beer for which style matters and Fosters was very serious about this beer. With the declining fortunes of VB (driven chiefly by the changing nature of the mainstream beer market as the core 18 – 30 market shifted towards this type of beer) and the stunting of Pure Blonde’s growth as a result of increased competition in the low-carb space, there was considerable pressure on the brewer for Carlton Natural to succeed. The launch of Carlton Natural was supported with a multi-million dollar trade and consumer marketing campaign featuring TV and press ads, outdoor billboards and on and off-premise promotions.

The beer itself is a heavily adjunct-brewed beer bittered with Pride of Ringwood hops and finished with Saaz. The brewery’s media release said the “brewing process is extended in order to break down the complex sugars, keeping the carbs down and the clean crisp flavour up” though, of course, this notion of keeping the “flavour up” must be viewed within the context of the category and the fact that for this style of beer “easy drinking” and “flavour” are more or less mutually exclusive terms.

As usual with brand extensions it suffered lack of sales and disappeared very quickly.