Victoria Bitter - Marketing and Promotion

Marketing and Promotion

The early slogan from the 60s "For a hard earned thirst, you need a big cold beer, and the best cold beer is Vic, Victoria Bitter" was replaced by "VB – The Drinking Beer" as part of a marketing strategy to reposition VB up-market.

In 2005, VB had started a promotion where David Boon became the face of Victoria Bitter (VB) beer for its 2005/06 summer advertising campaign, called Boonanza. Part of the promotion was the sale of a talking David Boon figurine with purchases of cartons of beer, which would make comments when prompted by Channel Nine commentary.

In late 2006, the Boonanza promotion returned as Boonanza II for the 2006-07 Ashes series. The promotion now included former England cricket captain Ian Botham as a talking figure, who would interact alongside an updated David Boon figure.

For the 2007-08 Australian cricket series, Shane Warne took over as VB spokesperson from David Boon. Warne will also have a talking figurine as part of a new Warnie promotion, taking over from the highly successful Talking Boony dolls from the two previous Boonanza promotions.

VB has invested heavily in sponsorships of Australian rugby league. It is currently the official beer of the NRL, the naming rights sponsor for NRL Friday Night Football and the main sponsor of the Australian national rugby league team, the Kangaroos.

Victoria Bitter was also the main sponsor of the Australian Tri-Series for five years between 2001-02 to 2005-06. During this time the series was renamed The VB Series.

Victoria Bitter currently sponsors the away Test, ODI and Twenty20 teams for the Australia national cricket team.

The previous advertising campaign was called the Stubby Symphony, where 100 members of the Melbourne and Victorian orchestras play the theme from The Magnificent Seven only using VB beer bottles. The campaign was created by George Patterson Y&R in Melbourne.

VB launched a new advertising campaign in Australia in July 2009 to coincide with the SBS television broadcast of the 2009 The Ashes cricket series. They will drop the famous tag "For a hard earned thirst.." for "VB – The Drinking Beer".

In an interview, Ex-The Distillers singer/guitarist, Brody Dalle said that Victoria Bitter was all her and her bandmates drank during their time in Australia.

VB is mentioned in I Was Only Nineteen, the #1 single by Redgum from the 1983 album Caught in the Act.