Cask ale is a traditional beer and a deep part of the British pub culture we love. It’s brewed with passion, care and skill, and is an integral part of what makes a proper pub.

In spite of that, cask has been in decline for decades. Inconsistent quality in the pub, the rise of craft ale, premium lagers, premium spirits, and changing consumer drinking habits have all made the market a challenging one.

Brand and image are important to younger pub goers and cask ale has a big issue. Cask’s image has strong appeal to its core fan base, but 71% are over 50, 93% are male and they’re in decline.

For younger drinkers, seduced by the branding and flavours of modern craft ales and premium continental lagers, cask ale is too easy to ignore.

And therein lies the brief: make cask ale a more relevant choice for younger drinkers.

Drink Cask Fresh is a campaign to support the whole cask brewery and pub sector by encouraging the large number of occasional cask drinkers to choose cask in the pub, a little more often.

The campaign leads on cask’s credentials as the freshest beer on the bar, with a vibrant and energetic creative that explores the rich layers of the cask world in a distinctive way, to get the attention of drinkers when ordering at the bar.

Branded POS kits for pubs, at the bar and the table, conveys the campaign’s key messages about freshness, variety, skilfully made and sustainable beer.

Drink Cask Fresh is in a trial phase with POS kits in 30 pubs. The POS assets carry QR codes to monitor and learn for the UX on the campaign website that we created, for a deeper dive into the word of cask.

A targeted social campaign uses a mix of branded assets designed for sharing by campaign supporters and partners, and user-generated content from brewers and pubs in the trial. The UGC is framed on the idea of brewers and bar staff pub telling goers why they love cask and what makes it so special for them.

The campaign effectiveness is being researched in 3 ways. Sales data from 30 pilot pubs is being compared with the control group. Quantitative research comes from focus groups of target drinkers, and live feedback from bar staff will provide vital anecdotal insights from customer interactions at the bar.