Victoria Bitter ‘Calluses’ Poster

Before 1968 Carlton & United Breweries had a monopoly on beer served across the hotel bar in Victoria. That brand was Carlton Ale. With the entry of Courage Breweries a joint venture between local hoteliers, the British brewer Courage, Barclay & Simonds (it became Courage Ltd in 1970) and the British Tobacco Group put pressure on CUB to rethink their branding.

George Patterson Melbourne was appointed to the CUB account for Victoria in 1967. At that time, beer marketing and advertising was pretty unsophisticated as CUB had a virtual monopoly. Draught beer in pubs was unbranded, patrons simply asked for “a beer”. CUB’s packaged products had no defined positioning and no real brand values. But Courage, the UK beer giant, was about to enter the market. It was essential that some long term brand positioning and advertising strategies were put in place.

George Patterson Advertising Melbourne had the responsibility of determining and writing the strategies for CUB’s four big products at the time – draught beer, which became Carlton Draught, Foster’s Lager, Melbourne Bitter and Victoria Bitter. It’s interesting to recount that an early recommendation was to brand the draught beer product VB.

In 1967 Bruce Jarrett from ‘Patts’ wrote a pool of TV and radio spots for VB based on the work he’d already done for Bulimba Gold. John Meillon was called in to do the voice overs. ‘A music track was needed for presentation to our client – everything depended on the track – and so I briefed Bob (Beetles) Young, a highly experienced free-lance musical director, on the music. I wanted something big, rough and gutsy, something like the music used in the then current Magnificent Seven movie and that became the VB music track’. The commercials were produced by Cambridge Films with John Dixon was the director. The TVC ads went to air in February 1968.

By 1970 the format had struck trouble. The rhyming couplets like “rollin’ and bowlin’”, “jumpin’ and pumpin’” was proving restrictive. So the format changed slightly to the “How do you get it?” approach allowing new extensions and freshness. But those powerful words like “a hard earned thirst needs a big cold beer, and the best cold beer is Vic” and “matter of fact, I’ve got it now” remained firmly entrenched and the power of the communication unaffected as a result.

The campaign has not changed since, except for a slight departure in format during the late 80’s: “Some people shoe for it, some people crew for it”. John Meillon again did the voice-overs but the new style was not successful and a return to the original format followed almost immediately.

Not many items were produced from the TVCs as it was so successful. The brand lost its way in the 2010s and they decided to relaunch a new campaign in 2018 accompanied by the tagline “a hard-earned thirst needs a big cold beer”. This poster was a result.