Ilkley Brewery to highlight heritage in ad campaign

The brewery met up with top London advertising agency St. Luke’s to work on a new Yorkshire Post advertising campaign to promote its beer after winning a nationwide competition with the Newspaper Society.

The brewery fought off competition from 3,000 local businesses to be crowned the Local Business Accelerators’ national winner and will win a year’s mentorship from Dragons’ Den star, Deborah Meaden.

Ilkley Brewery’s managing director Chris Ives said the day spent with St. Luke’s gave the company not just an advertising campaign, but a business strategy going forward.

“We want drinkers to look more creatively at what they’re drinking. It’s about educating rather than changing people,” said Mr Ives.

“It’s about making the average drinker on the street realise there are wider and more colourful beers out there.”

He added that the directors he met at St. Luke’s, which counts Strongbow, H Samuel, Littlewoods, the Government and Majestic Wine among its clients, had changed the way he looks at the market.

“I learned that we are probably better than we think we are at branding. We are doing very well, but we can do it differently to push it forwards,” he said.

“It gave me confidence in what we’re doing.”

The campaign will focus on the beers’ exceptional depth and flavour.

“We’re going to stick with the Yorkshire-isation idea. We’re keeping the Yorkshire heritage. We shouldn’t tear it up and throw it away.

“We take the best examples of beers from around the world and Yorkshire-ise them.”

St. Luke’s strategy director Dan Hulse said: “Ilkley Brewery has a mission to educate people. A lot of people are interested in food and wine, but they don’t think beer is worth being a gourmet of.

“They’ll drink Peroni or John Smith’s because they’re not aware there’s anything else out there. Ilkley Brewery wants to help people take the beer path less trodden.”

Ilkley Brewery scours the world for the best products to add to its beers and this will be one element of the advertising campaign.

“There are no hopfields in Yorkshire as the climate isn’t conducive. American and New Zealand hops are much better to use as you need arid conditions,” said Mr Ives.

Mr Hulse summarised it as: “Uncompromisingly original beers of exceptional depth and flavour, inspired by the world and perfected in Yorkshire.”

Other ingredients range from rhubarb, cranberries, lemon peel, vanilla and grapefruit to hops that smell of blackcurrants or lychees.

“We test the beers on clients. If they sell well, we’ll produce more,” said Mr Ives.

“We produce beers that we think are distinctly different and we have just changed some of our branding to say that we are ‘deceptively different’, because we like to think that if you have a beer of ours, you’ll have another one. And that’s what’s hopefully driven our business forward.”

Every stage of production at Ilkley Brewery is done by hand and this won’t change, said Mr Ives.

“We are a craft brewery and we intend to stay so, no matter how big we get.”

Export is now on the agenda for the brewery, which employs nine people.

“If we brew for export we don’t pay UK duty and UK duty is five times higher than any other European country for beer,” Mr Ives said. “If we export to the States, duty is expensive but English beer is a premium product.”

Ms Meaden is going to help the brewery look at how relevant its branding is to international markets.

The campaign is scheduled to appear in the Yorkshire Post later this year.

Reviving a tradition

Ilkley Brewery brought brewing back to the spa town after a gap of nearly 100 years.

The original Ilkley brewery, named The Ilkley Brewery and Aerated Water Company, was founded in 1873 in Brewery Road.

It grew into one of the largest breweries in Yorkshire before being taken over by Hammond’s Bradford Brewery Co in 1923. Parts of the old brewery building still stand today.

Ilkley Brewery’s managing director Chris Ives said Yorkshire water is ideal for brewing, hence the vast number of microbreweries in the region. Mr Ives and Stewart Ross set up Ilkley Brewery in early 2009 after careers in commercial property.