The Sleeman Brewing and Malting Company has a story to tell Quebec beer drinkers – and it’s hoping the message won’t get lost in the translation.

The Guelph, Ont. brewery has a new campaign set to break in Quebec the first week of July, using both radio and the Montreal-based weekly alternative newspapers Voir and Mirror.

Kevin Meens, Sleeman vice-president of sales and marketing, says the brewery’s goal is to double its share of the Quebec pie to 2% over the next 24 months.

To do that, Sleeman is employing the strategy it has used in Ontario and British Columbia for the last 10 years: telling the Sleeman story.

It’s the story of how John H. Sleeman, a Cornish immigrant and great-great-grandfather of current company president John W. Sleeman, started his own brewery in 1836.

How John H.’s son George Sleeman became mayor of Guelph in 1880.

How George’s son George A. was caught smuggling beer into Detroit in 1933, and sold the brewery to pay the taxes on the illicit suds.

How John W. Sleeman incorporated Sleeman Brewing and Malting in 1985, and introduced Sleeman Cream Ale, brewed with century-old recipes, three years later.

The company’s Quebec advertising will draw upon this rich heritage to tell consumers what the brewery is and what it’s all about.

Jean Francois Bouchard, president of Sleeman’s Quebec agency, Diesel Marketing in Montreal, says the most obvious person to tell this story is company president John W. Sleeman.

But telling the story in traditional fashion wouldn’t work in Quebec, he adds.

So, tapping Quebecers’ widely-noted appreciation of humor in advertising, the radio component of the campaign will feature John W. Sleeman telling the tale of his brewery in halting French, interrupting his delivery with slang Quebecois asides as he struggles good-naturedly with Canada’s other official language.

Francophones will appreciate his effort to communicate in their own tongue, Bouchard says.

He dismisses concerns that a truly Anglo-Canadian story won’t play in Quebec.

The Sleeman story, explains Bouchard, goes beyond the good old days to the brewing of a good, interesting beer in the here and now.

The idea behind telling the story is simply to show the uniqueness of the brewery’s products and deliver a broader message to beer drinkers in the province.

Meens, for his part, argues that as long as the product being marketed is high-quality, Quebecers will enjoy it, regardless of its origins.

Sleeman Brewing’s move into the Quebec market in the last 18 months has produced ‘terrific’ results so far, he enthuses.

The target for Sleeman’s beers in Quebec is a younger group, aged 20-45, with perhaps a slight skew to women.

The group is well-educated and has a higher-than-average income.

Sleeman is selling three of its four beers in Quebec: Cream Ale, Original Dark and Silver Creek Lager.

Although Sleeman Brewing sold ‘everything it could ship’ to Quebec last year, the market there is not without obstacles, Meens says.

For example, the markets for Sleeman beers have to be ‘cosmopolitan’ enough to accept segmentation, and sophisticated enough to be aware of ‘micro’ or craft-brewed beers.

That means the beers will get a warm welcome in Montreal, Quebec City and other urban – and urbane – centres, but won’t make much of a dent in those places where mainstream beers hold sway.

Still, says Meens, the same holds true in Ontario, where Sleeman beers do well in the southern parts of the province, but aren’t a force in the north.

A further wrinkle in the Quebec marketing picture for Sleeman in Quebec is the way beer is distributed.

In Ontario, Sleeman beer is sold through Brewers Retail stores, the monopoly sales arm of Molson Breweries and Labatt Breweries.

As a result, he continues, data on sales is available almost instantly with the click of a mouse.

In Quebec, it’s different.

There – in what some would call a less uptight environment – it’s the number of bars, restaurants and depaneurs (corner stores) in which your product can be found that counts, and sales figures are much slower coming in.

Bouchard says he and his client chose radio for the campaign because of its frequency and reach – and because radio has always done well for Sleeman Brewing.

There are four 30-sec. spots in French, and four in English.

They decided to go with Voir and Mirror as well, because print is the vehicle to use when there’s plenty of information to impart, as in this case.

As for the perennial question of what Quebecers prefer in marketing and advertising, Bouchard says as a general principle, anything made in Quebec works.

In the case of television, for example, nine of the 10 most popular programs in Quebec are produced in that province.

Humor is also a winner, Bouchard says.

But it should be used to make a point, rather than as an end in itself.