Heineken pushes ‘premium’ Symonds brand as summer cider wars heat up

The £2m “More Than Your Usual Cider” campaign for Symonds Founder’s Reserve will promote the brand’s Hereford heritage and “authenticity” through OOH, social and online activity and a media partnership with a national newspaper featuring hand drawn illustrations showcasing stories and characters from the brand’s past.

The brand will also host masterclasses to promote pairing cider with food.

Emma Sherwood-Smith, cider brand director at Heineken, told Marketing Week that the brand “fits a gap in the draught cider range”, offering a dry cider like Strongbow that can play into “more premium food outlets”.

“It’s a hard category that’s very seasonal, and typical campaigns will play on occasionality,” she said. “We really wanted to take it into a much more premium space and create standout.”

She adds that Symonds is also hoping to reach on-premise licensees who have not been “as successful in premiumising cider as they have been in other categories like lager”.

Heineken has seen “fantastic organic growth” since setting out an ambition in 2012 to grow the cider category according to Sherwood-Smith, who said Symonds “completes the Heineken UK range of ciders”.

She says Symonds has seen 15.5% YTD value sales growth and 13% volume growth, and expects both the brand and the category to continue to grow.

“We expect the value of the category to reach £3.7bn by 2019 in the UK,” she added. “The part of the category that Symonds fits in, the Heritage section, is experiencing tremendous growth and has around 18% share of the draught cider category.”

Nearly 60% of adults in the UK now drink cider according to Mintel data cited by Heineken.

Not to be outdone, Molson Coors launched a summer-focused £5.4m TV, outdoor, digital and experiential campaign today (15 June) for its Carling British Cider in an effort to “drive increased distribution and trial”, having launched the product in 2013 in an effort to exploit the growing cider market.

Jim Shearer, Carling brand director at Molson Coors told Marketing Week: “We launched the media campaign now to coincide with the popularity of cider during the summer months.”

Meanwhile, Kopparberg has launched a £5m summer marketing campaign created by 18 Feet & Rising for its Frozen Fruit Cider.

The press, social media, digital and outdoor campaign will run throughout the season along with the return of London’s Kopparberg Urban Forest pop-up festival.