We know this is gonna come as a shock, kids, but believe it or not, there was a time when all you’d find in a case of beer was…well, beer.

Yup, it’s true. Of course, you could be forgiven for disbelieving us on this one – especially in light of recent events in the Ontario market.

Canada’s major breweries, it seems, just couldn’t stop coming up with customer enticements this past summer. In addition to the now-obligatory price offers and contests, they crammed just about every type of premium imaginable into cases, from CDs to cell phones.

‘This was one of the most dynamic summers ever,’ says David Baskin, director of marketing for Coors Canada.

Baskin says it was Labatt Blue that upped the ante during the spring, with a wildly successful in-case promotion tied to the Stanley Cup playoffs. The competition quickly escalated as other brands entered the fray – to the point where individual brands were engaged in price offers and in-case promotions simultaneously.

Fearful of being caught flat-footed, Coors leapt in hurriedly, tossing free T-shirts into half a million cases. The results of the six-week promotion were undeniably satisfying: Consumers bought up all the cases in a little over four weeks, pushing sales of Coors into second place (after Blue) in July. Still, Baskin admits to a certain ambivalence about the whole thing.

‘I wouldn’t say we really used strategy,’ he remarks.

Baskin isn’t alone with his concerns. Indeed, this past summer’s frantic activity in the beer category has prompted a fair amount of debate about the role of consumer incentive programs in the marketing mix.

While there’s no arguing that in-pack giveaways can boost short-term sales, marketers warn that a steady diet of premiums can erode brand equity if they’re not developed and executed strategically.

The key, says David Kincaid, vice-president of marketing for Labatt Breweries of Canada, is to tie premiums to the brand’s identity.

‘If I just stuck a bunch of widgets into cases, it would be meaningless,’ Kincaid says. That’s why all of Labatt’s in-pack giveaways are, in one way or another, designed to build upon or extend and leverage strategic brand initiatives.

For example, last spring’s NHL playoff-related activities – which included giving away miniature Stanley Cups in cases of Blue – were intended to help the brand gain additional mileage from its status as Hockey Night in Canada title sponsor.

Those miniature Cup trinkets proved particularly popular with beer-drinkers. Indeed, the response even surprised Labatt. In Ontario, the 750,000 Cup-containing cases sold out in less than five weeks – nearly twice as quickly as originally projected. And those sales translated into a gain of two share points.

‘I’ve been in the business for 15 years,’ Kincaid says, ‘and I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Labatt brings the same integrated, brand-focused approach to all of its promotional activities, he notes.

In the case of the Budweiser brand, for example, the brewery developed a summer program tied to NASCAR racing, which included a racing cap giveaway and a contest offering Bud drinkers the chance to become part of a NASCAR pit crew.

Not surprisingly, rival Molson Breweries also charged into this summer’s beer-box wars with promotional guns blazing.

Leveraging its own longstanding association with the NHL, Molson delivered up hockey memorabilia as well, giving away logo-emblazoned pucks and miniature sticks in cases of Molson Canadian.

‘In-pack premiums can assist in repositioning a brand,’ says Rick Shaver, vice-president, client services with Molson’s promotional agency, Encore Encore Strategic Marketing. ‘They can make a statement.’

They can’t do it alone, however. To be fully effective, Shaver says, promotional giveaways must integrate well with a brand’s marketing activities at all levels.

He cites Molson Canadian’s partnership with the annual alternative-rock tour EdgeFest as a good example of a well-strategized promotion. Molson stuck sampler CDs into cases of Canadian, and used high-profile television spots to highlight the brand’s association with the festival.

The use of consumer promotions in the brewing industry got a kick-start several years ago, with a regulatory change allowing companies to offer value-added trinkets with alcoholic beverages, provided that the value of the premium does not exceed 10% of the product’s retail price.

Shaver says the kind of high-concept promotions that proliferated in the Ontario market this past summer do carry some risk to brand equity. But as long as marketers allow themselves to be guided by brand strategy when creating premiums, the risk is minimal.

It helps to have a single agency responsible for developing and integrating all of the promotional elements, he adds – the offer, the packaging, the point-of-purchase materials and the advertising.

A well-conceived premium will definitely enhance brand equity, says Chris Legein, president of Marketing & Promotion Group. Indeed, even brand-loyal consumers will consider switching for the right premium.

Legein, however, questions the value of price-off promotions, which he says do nothing for brand equity. And he warns of potential backlash to programs that require consumers to purchase a certain volume of product in order to collect a set of trinkets.

Marketers are well-advised to approach in-pack premiums with caution, says Peter Osicka, president and creative director of Opticom Promotion Group. For the most part, he says, the breweries have done an admirable job of creating promotional programs that make sense for their brands, and for the specific target group. But the danger of jumping aboard the premium bandwagon is that ‘it’s hard to get off.’

The ideal scenario, Osicka suggests, is to create a premium that your brand, and your brand alone, can own. That’s why so many packaged goods companies buy into specific licensed properties.

So what can Ontario beer-drinkers expect next summer? More of the same, predicts David Baskin. ‘Now that the dust has settled, all of the brands will be looking at what they’re going to do next year,’ he says.

Also in this report:

– Beer promo trend ‘cyclical’: Breweries swing from branding to promos every few years, expert says p.25

– Voltage aims for tight fit with brand: Canada’s newest promo agency bases pitch on ability to integrate marketing disciplines p.27

– Alpine offers points for caps: Program called a first for industry p.29

– Netcentives busy recruiting Canadian retailers: Plans to launch its ClickRewards program in Canada this fall p.30