She's a hard road knocking off this Southern icon

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/The Press

GOING STRONG: After almost being taken off the market a few years ago, Speights is now one of the country's biggest selling beers.

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Fifty years ago this month New Zealand Breweries launched its Lucky beer nationwide and announced it would stop brewing local ales – including Speight's.

It seems inconceivable today, when Speight's is the biggest-selling beer in New Zealand, that it was once taken off the market.

Public outcry resulted in the decision being reversed two months later. In the decades since, various rival brews have tried to knock Speight's off but it has survived while beers like Lucky have gone the way of the moa.

Today demand for the southern ale means most brewing and packaging has moved from Dunedin's Rattray St to other centres. But the distinctive central-city building still makes about 15 per cent of the wellspring Gold Medal Ale.

"I think it's really important for locals to realise it is still a working brewery," Speight's marketing manager Sean O'Donnell said.

"We still brew beer there Monday to Friday and we see that as a really important part of the brand. Speight's Brewery in Dunedin is where it all began and we are looking to grow the brewery."

Tours manager Chris Snow knows the Speight's Brewery like the back of his hand. Daily, he and his team show visitors through a facility now making nine types of beer.

"We brew 4.5 million litres of beer here a year," Mr Snow said. "That's a relatively significant percentage of the draught beer sales. The kauri gyles (vats) in the brewery are quite unique, and as far as we're aware there is not another set anywhere else that is fully operational. Some are still used for whisky distilling but not, we think, for brewing. That's quite cool."

While Speight's survived the 1960 "assassination attempt", it took at least another 20 years before the beer and its Rattray St home base were secured. Brewery tours were introduced in 1983, and in 1997 the Speight's Heritage Centre was opened, and redeveloped two years later to include the first of what is now a chain of Speight's Ale Houses.

But perhaps the most important development of all was an advertising campaign which sold Speight's to the rest of New Zealand. The concept behind 1987s Southern Man ads survives to this day in Speight's marketing campaigns, and cemented the "Good on ya, mate" line into the public consciousness.

"That concept actually came out of here, as part of a competition in 1982 for people who worked at the brewery to draft a slogan," Mr Snow said. "A guy called Malcolm Campbell, who has recently retired, came up with the slogan, Pride of the South. He got second prize: First prize went to a lady called Jackie Peperkoorn, who came up with Follow The Stars, but Pride of the South is still the one we use today.

"I think that whole connection with what we call the heartland, southern New Zealand, and the whole Southern Man thing, and those advertisements really put Speight's back on track."

Speight's became the No1 selling beer by volume in 2003, and has continued to grow since then. Speight's GMA is the biggest-selling individual beer, and the overall Speight's stable is the biggest individual beer trademark in the country.

Mr O'Donnell said the success of the now familiar advertising campaigns was because the commercials tapped into core values like loyalty, mateship and integrity. The characters get their well-earned beer after a hard day's work.

"In the early 90s, Lion Nathan made the decision that Speight's, with all its amazing heritage and values, represented something the whole of New Zealand loved," Mr O'Donnell said. "It embarked on a national strategy and hasn't looked back ... even last year when we saw a decline in New Zealand's beer market in terms of volume of sales, the brand has continued to grow. I think that shows the strength of the brand."

Several factors have grown Speight's over recent years. Following a worldwide move towards craft beers, Speight's expanded its range of beer styles – although some recipes used actually dated back many years in the company's history. Speight's Distinction Ale, revived in 1994, dates back to the 1880s while Speight's Pale Ale dates to 1949, Porter to 1929 and Pilsener to 1955. In beer at least, it seems it is true that the more things change the more they stay the same.

The success of those beers was driven in part by the establishment of the Speight's Ale House – a Kiwi version of the kitset Irish bar. Often those bars have been managed by Otago identities – former All Blacks and Otago rugby forwards Jamie Joseph and Arran Pene are notable operators of Ale Houses.

Two new beers have gone on tap in the past two years. Summit, a Speight's lager, is now the company's second-biggest seller, while low-carb beer Traverse is also selling well, Mr O'Donnell said.

"The beer market has changed a lot in the past few years. It's a lot more competitive and there's a lot more innovation. For us it has been about making sure Speight's remains a real icon ... and we've started selling all over the world.

"One of our markets, which has become quite big for us, surprisingly, is that we're selling Speight's in Hawaii, and that's going really well. You wouldn't think of Hawaii as a market for us, but the Hawaiians have gone from drinking lagers to drinking ales and draughts, so they have really embraced Speight's.

"We think there is a long road ahead of Speight's yet."

- © Fairfax NZ News