Stella Artois Celebrates Community Outlets with New Award

The No 1 premium lager brand is showing its grass roots support for the licensed trade with the innovative Award programme designed to honour outlets that are achieving excellence in terms of their community relations. This includes outlets that offer a good ambience and a warm welcome to those running sports screenings and ones with popular features such as  a sunny beer garden.

The winner of the inaugural ‘Love Your Local’ Award will receive prizes worth a total of £8,500 shared between the retailer and staff - together with London-wide recognition of their status as the best loved local.

Three runners-up will also receive cash rewards and all successful outlets will benefit from national and regional media coverage including free profiling in media partner, The Evening Standard, and coverage on its website - www.thisislondon.co.uk - to drive footfall.

The Stella Artois initiative will be backed by a range of consumer activities over the summer months to stimulate participation. The innovative programme supports the key Stella Artois brand messages of premium product quality and reflects the core brand values of ‘Care Passed On’.

The brand is also undertaking authoritative research looking at community cohesion as an issue which will consider the positive role of the pub and its position as a pillar of the community.

Stuart MacFarlane, President InBev UK & Ireland, says: “Stella Artois is recognising and rewarding those pubs that champion community cohesion and tap into community pride both through the nature of their environment and the support they provide to customers - both local residents and people working in the area.

“The ‘Love Your Local’ programme emphasises that pubs remain very much the pillar of the community and are playing a positive role in shaping the nature of the local environment.

“It is appropriate that the Award has been created by Stella Artois because it is a key part of the pub experience for millions of consumers and a proven driver of draught lager business for tens of thousands of outlets.”

Stella Artois is the most widely available draught lager in UK pubs being available in five out of ten outlets.* It also has the highest number of consumers across all major lager brands who claim they wouldn’t drink anything else - under any circumstances - and the highest number of ABC1 drinkers of any lager brand.**

Retailers can nominate their outlet by contacting a freephone hotline - 0800 013 7982 - which they can also use to request point-of-connection elements to display and communicate their participation in the ‘Love Your Local’ Award.

‘Love Your Local’ point-of-connection material including beer mats, posters, window stickers, table talkers, menu inserts, t-shirts and badges will be available to outlets to encourage consumers to support their local’s campaign.

Consumers can vote using freepost postcards available in participating outlets or by registering their views online at www.loveyourlocal.co.uk. To stand a chance of making the shortlist, outlets must generate a number of stories from their customers outlining why they love their ‘local’. The shortlisted outlets will then be visited by a panel of industry judges who will select a winner and three runners-up.

The winning outlet will receive a £5,000 bursary, a £2,000 holiday allocation and £1,500 for a staff incentive plus a Stella Artois-funded event at the venue to celebrate the Award. Runners-up will receive a £1,500 bursary, £2,000 holiday allocation and £1,500 staff incentive.
The cash bursary for winning outlets will enable licensees to invest in their outlets and make additional upgrades to further enhance the attraction to consumers and make the outlet even more community-friendly.

MacFarlane adds: “The programme will help to create a positive sales environment for retailers and support the position of Stella Artois as the UK’s most loved beer brand in the hearts and minds of retailers and consumers alike.

“It will also fulfil an important role for the industry as a whole because it will underline the close link between community pubs and responsible drinking - challenging the negative perceptions of the industry often communicated in certain sections of the consumer media.”

‘Love Your Local’ is open to all licensed outlets - both stockists and non-stockists of Stella Artois. The inaugural Award is London-based - with pubs in all 32 boroughs able to participate - but there is potential for it to be rolled out nationally at a later stage.

* Source: AC Neilsen.
**Source: Alcovision 2007.