I have just been informed I should take a look at Shepherd Neame’s new advertising campaign for their relaunched Bishops Finger (the lack of an apostrophe still annoys me every time), and I am saddened and disappointed, but I suppose truth be told, not altogether surprised.
A couple of years ago I had a bit of a rant about various breweries still using Carry-On-Confessions-Of-A-Window-Cleaner 1970’s sexist humour on their branding.
And then I see this.
A brewery who I have met and am friendly with doing this kind of thing.
I’m not even going to publish a copy of one of the advertising images on here, instead I’ll just give you a link in case you want to have a look.
But a buxom maid sat astride a cask with her legs apart and the tag line, “Come inside and enjoy a Bishops Finger,” is in my eyes wholly inappropriate and unnecessary in 2013.
I bet Pumpclip Parade will have something to say about this too.
If you want to see for yourself, click here.
Shepherd Neame, I ignored the awful and arguably racist advertising for Spitfire like this one, but with this I am afraid you’ve have taken a nosedive in my feelings towards you.
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It is indeed ridiculous but check out the strap line “at 5.4% it’s near the knuckle” ! They know EXACTLY what they are doing. Controversial advertising for modern times yet within the advertising standards = publicity. If only the British public would hit them where it hurts (excuse my blatant sexist pun, but I mean the bottom line, oops another one!) stop buying this beer. IMHO it’s not that good anyway. It’s about £1 a bottle in Lidl so you get what you pay for and your cash is funding this drivel of advertising, we only have ourselves to blame.
The link to SN’s website is duff. Perhaps they’ve removed the offending article.
This is an old campaign. A pub I know has had those pictures up for years, at least a decade I’d say. Unless they’re being reused for some misinformed reason.
The ads were seen on a video feed in a pub this very weekend, so however old (2003 I believe) they are still being used.
It’s not a lot of different to what many other companies do, indeed what many other brewers do. In fact it seems to be a British institution to name beers based on really bad rude puns.
Also Italians aren’t a race, it’s just a joke at the expense of Italians awful military history, it’s based in fact – due to the hundreds of thousands of Italians who surrendered to the British Army in North Africa during the Second World War. At one point it was about 250,000 in one go if I remember correctly. It actually makes a nice change from the French and German WW2 bashing that happens on such a regular basis it’s become acceptable (surrender monkeys, don’t mention ze war etc).
So we should stop making such a big deal out of nothing, Sheperd Neame are, and have been for a long time, a maker of boring bland beers with boring bland advertising, just like hundreds of other breweries in this country.