Message First in Practice: Victoria Bitter

Message is the heart and soul of brand. Industry experts, agency leaders and leading CEOs know that putting message first is the only approach that delivers the best results for their marketing.

HNW might have codified a unique message first marketing approach, but a huge part of that has been watching how other brands and businesses centre their marketing around a core message. 

Brands like this one.

The Brand: Victoria Bitter

Victoria Bitter – or VB – is Australia’s first and only billion dollar beer brand. Instantly recognisable they’ve accounted for one in four beer sales in Australia as recently as 2004.

The Message: For a hard earned thirst

Selling beer to Australians should be a doddle. Your stereotypical Aussie bloke is rarely pictured without a stubby in hand, whether he’s sitting on the back of his ute after a hard day’s work, or watching the cricket in the baking sunshine. But that presents a challenge of its own. In a beer drinking nation, how do you stand out in a flooded market?

With message. Get your message right, like Victoria Bitter has, and you can insert your brand into that stereotypical image. That stubby our Australian’s holding? It has a green label. The cold beer he’s sinking after the Poms have been walloped at the Gabba (“the beer he’s drinking after England have lost an Ashes test match in Brisbane,” for those whose tastes run more to Boddingtons)? 

That archetypical Australian beer says VB on the glass.

And all of this without the cloying stereotypical down-undery that plagues the marketing of brands like Fosters (complete with defunct ‘Fostralia’ tagline) and Castlemaine XXXX for the overseas market. 

Victoria Bitter’s message is stunningly simple. Not for them the forced laddishness of Carling, or the faux-pretentiousness of Stella. And it’s a million miles away from the self-aggrandising American beer market and Budweiser’s alleged “King of Beers.”

It’s more than just a good, cold beer for when you’re thirsty. It’s the beer you deserve. You’ve worked up a thirst honestly through your own effort. Because in Australia, there’s plenty of things that make you thirsty. Working, talking, watching sport, simply existing in a country that’s got a massive desert in the centre of it. 

Victoria Bitter isn’t just something to moisten your mouth, it’s the right reward after a hard day of masculine pursuits, either in the workplace, on the sports field, or just being bloody warm. But it’s not an exclusionary, stereotypical masculinity in the “Yorkies aren’t for girls” vein. It undercuts any accusations of beers only being for manly men in the execution, by demonstrating that something as innocuous and gender neutral as “talking” will earn you your beer.

But the real strength is in the honesty. It’d be far too easy to turn to parody or gentle mickey-taking. A kind of “you’ve not really earned this, but have one anyway” delivery. But Victoria Bitter plays everything with a straight bat. They put the effort into their beer, into their marketing, and if you believe you’ve put in the effort and deserve a big cold beer, well dive straight in. Crucially, you’re the one who decides, and they’ll back you wholeheartedly.

A simple message, for simple blokes, who’ve earned a drink. It’s no wonder the VB message is messaging pillar, positioning statement, strapline and call to action all rolled into one. 

“For a hard earned thirst”

You’ve had a hard day. And you’re thirsty. Have a nice cold glass, can or bottle of VB. Go on. You’ve earned it.

The Voice: Straight Talker

Because we’ve never worked with Victoria Bitter, we haven’t had the benefit of running a tone of voice workshop for them. 

But they’ve zigged where many alcohol brands zag. Think of alcohol advertising, and you’ll likely think of the language used by Jack Daniels (archetypical storytellers), nearly any wine brand (sensualist) or even Stella Artois (a ridiculous Gallic snob version of the impersonator). High concept voices, used to elevate their products.

Not VB. That’s straight talker, mate. You’re thirsty, drink this.

No pretensions here. Want to learn about VB? It’s a big cold beer, because it’s warm in Australia. Drink up. And that “ought to be” is exactly how an Australian would say it. An English editor would’ve been desperate to trim that down to should. 

And just look at this call to action. It’s not a case. Shane calls it a slab. So it’s a slab.

No nonsense, no forced joviality, no conceptual flourishes. And a nice use of secondary supporting messaging too. Knock-off is a neat bit of colloquialism meaning finishing work. The perfect support to that message of earning your beer. 

Yep. That’s straight-talker down to the ground. 

The Deployment: One message, delivered relentlessly

On billboards, you’ve earned your beer. Simple, straightforward, memorable. Key message as strapline, as call to action.

Working – or playing – hard in 1984? You’ve earned your thirst and deserve a VB, mate. 

And look at what these men are doing. They’re not doing ridiculous stereotypical things. Just normal stuff. Working, playing cricket, fishing. You can even earn that VB reading a voiceover script. Like we identified above, this isn’t about stereotyping or toxic masculinity. It’s all about the everyday things being enough to earn you a reward. A reward that should rightly be a Victoria Bitter when you knock off work. 

Even now, 40 years on, that exact same messaging works.

It’s 2024, you’re working, you’re good at your job, and you’ve earned a beer. Make that beer a VB. It’d be so easy to make this advert into a joke. Have the tree fall through a shed, and whoops, it’s another bumbling ad dad who’s too busy drinking dirty beer. But they don’t. This is honest work, being done well, and rewarded honestly. 

By keeping the format for decades, they’re able to get that message across without any supporting copy or any words at all. Just that iconic music that makes everyone think “you’ve earned a thirst.”

The sheer effort that went into this symphony backs up the feeling of hard work that underpins the message too. Whistling the theme into an empty bottle would’ve been easy and simple enough. It’d work, to a point. But why slack off, when you can work hard instead? That’s how you really earn your thirst.

Taking that message and that straight-talking voiceover off the screen and into the pub’s an easy logical step too. Reading this bar towel or the accompanying beermats, your brain can’t help but use that delivery, and that music. 

And the copy itself. We’re back to that concept of the everyday hero. Elevating changing the barrel to operating as an “engineer of beer,” – a formerly thankless task now positioned as something deserving of celebration, of reward. Hard work that should be appreciated, with a Victoria Bitter.

That message is so iconic that it’s used by other businesses as a selling point. You don’t need to tell your customers you’re stocking VB in the Goulburn Workers bar and club in New South Wales. You don’t need to slap their green logo across your branding. Instead, you can just repeat that message. People instantly understand it.

Look how even the supporting messaging echoes Victoria Bitter’s supporting themes. Knock off becomes down tools. Stockists are co-opting the message, of a VB being something you earn through honest toil. Of course a Workers’ club sells Victoria Bitter during Workers Hour – it’s the working man’s reward of choice.

And VB aren’t afraid of taking that key theme, earning your thirst-quenching beer, and developing it into a small number of laser-focused supporting messages. Your thirst’s big, so’s this beer. Open a bottle when you’re done working.

There’s nowhere that’s better deployed than with this supporting messaging, that brings to mind that 5pm feeling of finishing work, relaxing, and cracking open a cold one:

THE KEY MESSAGE:  For a hard-earned thirst

Primary strapline:     For a hard-earned thirst

Company mission: Quench the thirst of warm Australians

Supporting messages: A hard-earned thirst deserves a big cold beer

Knock-off with VB

Simplicity like this only comes from clear, consistent, and effective messaging. From the boundary rope to the bar, that message is the same. Clear, effective and memorable. No need to overthink it, just deliver it brilliantly. VB proves it however you’re building a thirst, the only way to connect with your audience is to put your message first. 

Putting your message first is so clear. So effective. So what are you waiting for?