JUMPING ON A TRENDING CATEGORY

Okay, in many ways, that makes sense. Brands above all want to be present in the highest number of bars, menus, occasions etc. If your sole product line is limiting your ability to do that, then sure, create something that expands the brand’s capabilities and takes it somewhere.

However, Monkey Shoulder’s approach is an interesting one. The product is not, nor has anything to do with a rum. It is essentially, a punchy new-make spirit, that is, the first baby steps towards a whisky. So the company isn’t veering too far from the brand here. But by sexing it up with the mention of a rum and trying to piggyback on that category’s current success, does it risk the reputation of whisky?

IS WHISKY NOT ENOUGH?

You see, by describing the product’s versatility and likeness in flavour to a rum, Monkey Shoulder is in one way indicating their innovative approach to spirit making. Yet in another, it is holding a big neon sign over the flaws of whisky; that it’s not versatile enough when it comes to cocktails. So where does that leave the rest of the brand? A brand that has crusaded to prove the versatility and mixability of rum.

Monkey Shoulder is going to have to tread carefully in its marketing to consumers and the on-trade if it isn’t to dial-up the perception that whisky, a) isn’t enough and b) isn’t right for the occasions that rum is a perfect fit for. Will consumers think it’s a rum? Will they care that it’s not? For consumers with a base understanding of spirits, it might be a challenge to explain.

However, Fresh Monkey has already heavily ‘leaned-in’ to the tropical vibes. Yes, that’s some undefined tropical foliage on that bottle label, that somehow manages to evoke sugarcane.

Will this innovation work? Or will the product be confined to the dusty back bar shelves once the fad for all things tropical begins to subside? Fresh Monkey may have been designed to challenge category norms, but it may also challenge the category.

HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH AND WHERE DOES BEER GO NEXT?

Experimentation, pushing the boundaries and changing perceptions; innovation was the driving force of the craft beer uprising, a movement that revolutionised the category, bringing new consumers and a multitude of new producers to it. But has the market now splintered itself into identity oblivion?

It goes like this. Beer, a drink with thousands of years’ worth of history, at one point, fell into a deep rut. Once an essential part of daily life, cask beer had become perceived as either old fashioned, warm, bland and the preserve of old men sat nursing it in pubs with yellow walls. Or else, in the case of lager, it was the bland, watery liquid that fired up football hooligans and domestic abusers, produced at scale by large multinationals. Neither was good. Both marketed themselves to men only. And both were arguably devoid of passion, quality and dynamism.

Then a curious thing happened. Young US brewers inspired by their travels across Europe returned with ideas to update, reinterpret and re-craft classic styles, morphing them into something new and crucially marketing them in unisex packaging that welcomed everyone in. The rest, as you know, is history, as the idea bubbled across the world to other key beer markets, who simultaneously both tore up, sometimes embraced and rewrote the rule book. And ultimately influencing other categories to go ‘craft’ by emphasising the passion and the process behind them.

Was it all a great success? Largely. Though after the initial rush to market by would-be brewers everywhere, droves of early players were either bought up by the large companies they positioned themselves as the antithesis of in the first place, or else they folded, unable to run a viable business in a saturated market. And that was just the first wave.

AN IDENTITY CRISIS?

Now, a good 15-20 years on from when the revolution started, where are we? Has it now burned itself out? Or even worse, is the craft beer movement suffering more than an identity crisis, but a complete lack of identity?

The thing is, craft – something that has eluded an official definition everywhere but in the US – has lost many of its key calls to action. Morphing from a movement to a marketing ploy, what does the category really now stand for, when half of the products on the shelves are owned by the players they originally rallied against?

It’s a well-trodden argument by beer purists, but do consumers in general looking for a tasty, reasonably priced, cool-looking beer really care? Arguably not. But as they category has fragmented, its also become increasingly hard to shop. Firstly, beer styles have ever fragmented, into some that don’t truthfully make any sense.