United Kingdom: Cobra Beer to attack pubs

Molson Coors has confirmed pubs remain “of great interest” for its Indian beer brand Cobra, despite a strategy targeting curry houses and the off-trade for growth since it acquired the brand last year, Morning Advertiser communicated on June, 7.

“The whole pub channel is of great interest to us and we have plans in the pipeline to target the sector in due course” said Adrian Davey, MD of the Cobra Beer Partnership. “We'll target pubs that serve curry, obviously, but fortunately there are a lot of those these days.”

Davey said the company was already in talks with several pub companies about promotions and activities but said he was unable to reveal details as yet.

This week the brewer celebrated the first bottling of Cobra out of its flagship Burton brewery — from this week all Cobra will be brewed there — and the launch of a £5 mln marketing campaign for the brand. This represents a “significant investment” and the most that has been spent on the brand since it joined the Molson Coors portfolio, Davey said.

“The campaign has been designed to build on the association between Cobra and curry with eye catching press ads and a radio campaign running alongside. Social networking sites such as Facebook are also a focus for us, with our 75,000 fans, which we plan to build on with a raft of innovative activities,” Davey added.

09 June, 2010