Boddingtons Brewery - Advertising

Advertising

The company eschewed advertising, preferring the quality of the product to speak for itself, until 1987, when Boddingtons was advertised on Granada television in the North West of England. The tagline from 1987 until 1991 was "If you don't get Boddies, you'll just get bitter". Under Whitbread's custodianship the comedian Frankie Howerd fronted the campaign in a series of six television advertisements which mainly aired in the North West in 1990–1991.

From July 1991 until 1999 a series of advertisements used "The Cream of Manchester" tagline. The campaign, credited with revitalising the image of Manchester, was arguably third behind Manchester United and Coronation Street in raising the city's profile. Originally a set of print advertisements, the campaign was extended to television in 1992. The television advertisements featured beautiful women with unlikely Mancunian accents and "achieved the seemingly impossible task of making bitter glamorous". The most famous television advertisement featured a glamorous couple on-board gondolas on Manchester's River Irwell, in a parody of a well-known Cornetto ice cream advertisement. According to the Manchester Evening News, "it told the world something about the reinvention of the murky old city, that its once-filthy waterway could almost pass for Venice."

The series won several international advertising awards for their creator, the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty. The brand's creaminess was emphasised through such items as face cream, ice cream, sun cream and whipped cream. Managing director of Whitbread, Miles Templeman, explained that:

We were thinking how to turn a second-rate north-west brand into something more stylish, to make it more appealing again. BBH thought of focusing on the creamy aspect, of selling a beer like a face cream.

A previously unknown Melanie Sykes launched her career as a television presenter following her appearances in the adverts from 1996 until 1999. Animated television advertisements starring the transgender playboy cow Graham Heffer ran from 1999 until 2002. The adverts attracted complaints from the public for allegedly promoting bestiality, homosexuality and drug-taking. Boddingtons become an official partner of the 2002 XVII Commonwealth Games held in Manchester in a deal worth at least £1 million. To mark the occasion, a special Boddingtons 5% ABV Commonwealth Ale cask ale was produced for the North West of England, and subsequently launched nationwide. The last Boddingtons television advertising campaign in 2005 was criticised for capitalising on the beer's Manchester heritage with a Happy Mondays soundtrack, even though production had moved out of the city. Mike Thompson, a former worker at the brewery and representative of the Transport & General Workers' Union, said:

This is at best cynical and at worst a slur on our great city, its heritage and the Strangeways workers. People have lost their livelihoods because of how this company has behaved. They will not be best pleased at what we can only see as pouring salt on the wounds.