Researching local advertising can produce some interesting results. For example in 2005, the Cardiff beer company S.A Brain & Co were told that despite their sponsorship of the Welsh rugby team, the “Brains” logo could not appear on the players’ shirts at the Stade de France for the 6 Nations rugby international between France and Wales. This was due to a French ban on television alcohol advertising.
To get around the problem, “Brains” exploited the expression “Brains and Brawn” – the balance between “intelligence and physical strength”. The word “Brawn” therefore appeared on the national rugby shirt in the same place and same style as the now absent Brains logo.
Following this shirt promotion, S.A Brain & Co received countless hours of media publicity for their ’solution’ to the alcohol advertising ban (and of course for their products and company). Brains subsequently sold merchandise such as t-shirts featuring the new “Brawn” logo, and the shirts worn by the players had a great value to collectors of sports memorabilia.
With the alcohol ban still in place for the France v Wales game of 2009 -S.A Brain’s marketing department designed a shirt to promote their beer product “S.A Bitter”. This is referred to in Wales as a pint of “S.A”. The shirt therefore featured “essai” the French word for “Try”, which is a score in rugby.
The shirt slogan read “TRY ESSAI”. To the vast majority of the French audience this seemed to be a bilingual shirt advert, but to a Welsh audience it sounded as if the TV commentators were saying “TRY SA“.
Once again Brains had exploited a highly localized form of advertising!
And as if by magic a new beer appeared on the Brains menu! Along with a variety of Brawn merchandise.
