Boddingtons Brewery was a
regional brewery
A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of beer ...
in
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
, England, which owned
pubs
A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...
throughout the
North West
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
. Boddingtons was best known for
Boddingtons Bitter (Boddies), a straw-golden,
hoppy bitter which was one of the first beers to be packaged in cans containing a
widget, giving it a creamy
draught-style
head.
In the 1990s, the beer was promoted as The Cream of Manchester in a popular advertising campaign credited with raising Manchester's profile. Boddingtons became one of the city's most famous products after
Manchester United and ''
Coronation Street''.
Whitbread
Whitbread plc is a multinational British hotel and restaurant company headquartered in Houghton Regis, England.
The business was founded as a brewery in 1742, and had become the largest brewery in the world by the 1780s.
Its largest division ...
bought Boddingtons Brewery in 1989 and Boddingtons Bitter received an increased marketing budget and nationwide distribution. Boddingtons achieved its peak market share in 1997 and at the time was exported to over forty countries.
Boddingtons beer brands are now owned by the global brewer
Anheuser–Busch InBev, which acquired the Whitbread Beer Company in 2000.
Strangeways Brewery closed in 2004 and production of
pasteurised
Pasteurization American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), or pasteurisation is a process of food preservation in which packaged and non-packaged foods (such as milk and fruit juices) are treated with mi ...
(keg and can) Boddingtons was moved to
Samlesbury
Samlesbury () is a village and civil parish in South Ribble, Lancashire, England. Samlesbury Hall, a historic house, is in the village, as is Samlesbury Aerodrome and a large modern brewery owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev. The population at the ...
in Lancashire. Production of the
cask-conditioned beer moved to
Hydes Brewery in
Moss Side
Moss Side is an inner-city area of Manchester, England, south of the city centre, It had a population of 20,745 at the 2021 census. Moss Side is bounded by Hulme to the north, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Rusholme and Fallowfield to the east, W ...
, Manchester, until it was discontinued in 2012, ending the beer's association with the city.
History
1778–1969
Strangeways Brewery was founded in 1778 by two-grain merchants, Thomas Caister and Thomas Fry, just north of what is now
Manchester city centre
Manchester City Centre is the central business district of Manchester in Greater Manchester, England situated within the confines of Great Ancoats Street, A6042 Trinity Way, and A57(M) Mancunian Way which collectively form an inner ring road. ...
. Their principal customers were the cotton workers of Manchester, then a burgeoning
mill town.
Henry Boddington, born in 1813 in
Thame
Thame is a market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, about east of the city of Oxford and southwest of Aylesbury. It derives its name from the River Thame which flows along the north side of the town and forms part of the county border wi ...
,
Oxfordshire, joined the brewery in 1832 as a travelling salesman when the brewery was in the possession of Hole, Potter and Harrison.
Like most Manchester breweries at the time, it was a modestly sized operation. Boddington had become a partner by 1848, alongside John and James Harrison, and by this time the company went under the name John Harrison & Co.
In January 1853, Boddington borrowed money to become its sole owner.
Between Boddington's takeover until 1877, the brewery's output increased tenfold from 10,000 to 100,000
barrels
A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, u ...
a year, making it not only Manchester's largest brewery but one of the largest in the
North of England, with over 100
tied house
In the United Kingdom, a tied house is a public house required to buy at least some of its beer from a particular brewery or pub company. That is in contrast to a free house, which is able to choose the beers it stocks freely.
A report for th ...
s. By 1883 Henry Boddington & Co. was a
limited liability company
A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of ...
. Henry Boddington's estate was valued at almost £150,000 when he died in 1886.
After Henry Boddington's death, his son, William Slater Boddington became company chairman, and the company went
public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichk ...
in 1888 when it was estimated to have assets of £320,465.
It was now known as Boddingtons Breweries Ltd.
Its major local competitors were
Groves and Whitnall,
Threlfalls, and the Manchester Brewing Company.
The company owned 212
public house
A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and wa ...
s by 1892, making it the twelfth largest
tied estate in the United Kingdom. The tied estate was mostly
freehold
Freehold may refer to:
In real estate
*Freehold (law), the tenure of property in fee simple
* Customary freehold, a form of feudal tenure of land in England
* Parson's freehold, where a Church of England rector or vicar of holds title to benefice ...
.
Boddingtons was one of the breweries implicated in the
1900 English beer poisoning
In 1900, more than 6,000 people in England were poisoned by arsenic-tainted beer, with more than 70 of the affected dying as a result. The food safety crisis was caused by arsenic entering the supply chain through impure sugar which had been mad ...
epidemic, in which 6,000 people were poisoned by arsenic and 70 died.
In January 1902, 86 percent of production was of
mild ale
Mild ale is a type of ale. Modern milds are mostly dark-coloured, with an alcohol by volume (ABV) of 3% to 3.6%, although there are lighter-hued as well as stronger milds, reaching 6% abv and higher. Mild originated in Britain in the 17th centur ...
.
Following the death of W. Slater Boddington in 1908, the family retained an interest in the company and continued to take a practical hand in its running.
Henry's youngest son, Robert Slater Boddington (1862–1930) had a fifty-year association with the company and oversaw the installation of a bottling hall in the 1920s.
Robert's third and fourth sons Philip (1893–1952) and Charles (1897–1982) served as joint chairman following the death of their father in 1930, and Charles took sole responsibility after Philip died.
By the 1930s, the Boddington family shareholding had dwindled to around 40 per cent. On 22 December 1940, the brewery
water tank
A water tank is a container for storing water.
Water tanks are used to provide storage of water for use in many applications, drinking water, irrigation agriculture, fire suppression, agricultural farming, both for plants and livestock, chemi ...
s were hit by bombs during the
Manchester Blitz
The Manchester Blitz (also known as the Christmas Blitz) was the heavy bombing of the city of Manchester and its surrounding areas in North West England during the Second World War by the German ''Luftwaffe''. It was one of three major raids o ...
, and the brewery had to be closed down for several months, with production moved temporarily to the nearby
Hydes Brewery. The brewery was rebuilt with the most up-to-date and modern equipment of the time, and was the first in Europe to install
stainless steel brewing vats.
Pale ale or "bitter" rapidly grew in popularity after the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
and overtook mild in sales from the 1950s.
Whitbread, a large brewery, took a 13 per cent stake in the company in 1961.
In 1962 the company purchased Richard Clarke & Co of
Reddish
Reddish is an area in Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. south-east of Manchester city centre. At the 2011 Census, the population was 28,052. Historically part of Lancashire, Reddish grew rapidly in the Industria ...
,
Stockport, adding 60 public houses to the firm.
Mergers and acquisitions
In 1969 the large
Allied Breweries
Allied Breweries was the result of a 1961 merger between Ind Coope (of Burton), Ansells (of Birmingham), and Tetley Walker (of Leeds).
In 1978, Allied Breweries merged with the food and catering group J. Lyons and Co to form Allied Lyons. The br ...
combine initiated a
hostile takeover
In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to t ...
bid for Boddingtons, which valued the company at £5 million.
Charles Boddington took the unusual step of issuing a spirited defence of the company to the shareholders:
You will be only too aware that present-day pressures bear heavily towards the elimination of individuality and character in many consumer goods. There is an inexorable progression towards the mass-produced nationwide product of standardised quality. You, however, are still, at this moment in time, a shareholder in one of the remaining independent brewery companies whose traditional draught beers have a reputation for quality and individual character beyond the immediate area of the North of England in which we operate ... The takeover of Boddingtons and its consequent elimination can achieve very little. It will do nothing for the national economy, add nothing to the nation's exports, and contribute nothing at all to the quality of life that we are all used to enjoy.
The company's independence was maintained after Whitbread acted as a
white knight by raising its stake in the company from 13 to 23 per cent, and the family and many small shareholders refused to sell their stakes.
The chairman of Whitbread, Colonel Whitbread, is reputed to have said, "You are a very old firm. You have a very good name. You mustn't go out." At the time, it was rare for a company to win the emotional argument for independence, and it was the first time a regional brewery had headed off an offer from a national company.
In 1970, Charles Boddington retired and his son Ewart assumed the directorship.
In 1971, Allied Breweries sold its 35 per cent stake in the company, leaving Whitbread 25 per cent and the Boddington family 10 per cent, with the remainder of company shares held by small shareholders in the Manchester area. That year
Guinness Draught stout and
Heineken
Heineken Lager Beer ( nl, Heineken Pilsener), or simply Heineken () is a pale lager beer with 5% alcohol by volume produced by the Dutch brewing company Heineken N.V. Heineken beer is sold in a green bottle with a red star.
History
On 15 Feb ...
lager were introduced into the tied estate. During the 1970s the company operated within a 70-mile radius of Manchester, and growth was driven by the increasing popularity of its main product, Boddingtons Bitter.
''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'' commented in 1974 that Boddingtons cheap pricing and distinctive flavour afforded it an unusually loyal following.
In 1981 the same newspaper commented,
what has stood Boddingtons in good stead is the highly distinctive flavour of its brews, especially its bitters. In fact, in the North-West, Boddies is increasingly becoming a sort of cult brew.
In 1982, Boddingtons bought the
Oldham Brewery for £23 million, hoping to combine Oldham's strength in lager and keg bitter with their own expertise in cask ales.
After the acquisition, the company owned 272
public houses
A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...
, 70 per cent of which were within 20 miles of its Manchester brewery.
In 1983, Boddingtons Bitter was distributed in the
Home Counties
The home counties are the counties of England that surround London. The counties are not precisely defined but Buckinghamshire and Surrey are usually included in definitions and Berkshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Kent are also often included ...
for the first time. In 1985 Boddingtons paid £27.5 million for the 160,000 barrel capacity
Higsons Brewery in
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
and its tied estate of 160 public houses to form a combine with a £65 million turnover.
''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' commented that the company had paid mere asset value for Higsons as the company had been reporting poor profits. There was virtually no overlap between the two companies, and the takeover brought Boddingtons to
Merseyside
Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Mersey Estuary and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wi ...
for the first time. By this time Strangeways was producing only two beers, a bitter and a mild, with bitter constituting over 90 per cent of production.
In 1986, the company employed 280 people and operated 530
tied house
In the United Kingdom, a tied house is a public house required to buy at least some of its beer from a particular brewery or pub company. That is in contrast to a free house, which is able to choose the beers it stocks freely.
A report for th ...
s, and while Strangeways Brewery had a capacity of 500,000 barrels a year, it was operating at around 50 per cent capacity.
That year the company introduced its own
lager
Lager () is beer which has been brewed and conditioned at low temperature. Lagers can be pale, amber, or dark. Pale lager is the most widely consumed and commercially available style of beer. The term "lager" comes from the German for "storag ...
, brewing
Kaltenberg under licence.
In 1987, the company rejected a £270 million
reverse takeover
A reverse takeover (RTO), reverse merger, or reverse IPO is the acquisition of a public company by a private company so that the private company can bypass the lengthy and complex process of going public. Sometimes, conversely, the public compa ...
bid by Midsummer Leisure. By this time Boddingtons had a tied estate of 520 pubs. In 1988, the company closed the Oldham Brewery with the loss of 70 jobs, and shed 140 transport jobs at Higsons and Strangeways by contracting out delivery work to
TNT
Trinitrotoluene (), more commonly known as TNT, more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reagen ...
.
Boddingtons remained independent until 1989, when Ewart Boddington sold Strangeways Brewery and the Boddingtons brand (but not the tied estate) to
Whitbread
Whitbread plc is a multinational British hotel and restaurant company headquartered in Houghton Regis, England.
The business was founded as a brewery in 1742, and had become the largest brewery in the world by the 1780s.
Its largest division ...
for £50.7 million.
Whitbread was motivated to plug a gap in its portfolio by owning a credible national cask ale brand. The sale was amicable, with both parties aware that Whitbread capital and distribution could make the Boddingtons brand national, although some Boddington family board members had been resistant to the sale.
Boddingtons had been in decline before the Whitbread takeover, and although it retained an almost "cult" following within its Manchester heartland, only 5 per cent of sales were outside the North West.
Whitbread era
![Strangeways Brewery, Manchester - geograph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Strangeways_Brewery%2C_Manchester_-_geograph.org.uk_-_42603.jpg)
Whitbread transformed the brand from regional to national, expanding production from 200,000 to 850,000 barrels a year between 1989 and 1995.
By 1993 the cask version was outsold only by
Tetley
Tetley is an English beverage manufacturer founded in 1837 in Yorkshire. It is the largest tea company in the United Kingdom and Canada, and the second largest in the United States by volume.
Since 2000, Tetley has been a wholly owned subsidiar ...
and
John Smith's, and the majority of sales were outside of the North West.
By 1994 it was the fourth-highest selling bitter brand in the country. The canned variant was distributed nationwide from 1990 and was the highest-selling canned bitter in the UK from 1992 until 2000. The beer was officially exported overseas from 1993, initially to Canada.
The rise in sales of the beer coincided with the elevation of Manchester from "city of dark, beaten mills to the cultural magnet of
Madchester
Madchester was a musical and cultural scene that developed in the English city of Manchester in the late 1980s, closely associated with the indie dance scene. Indie-dance (sometimes referred to as indie-rave) saw artists merging indie music ...
".
Manchester and the North of England were now fashionable in the public consciousness and rejuvenated from industrial slump. Whitbread chief executive Peter Jarvis commented in 1995 that:
Success was attributed to an excellent marketing campaign, and being the first canned ale to be sold with a
widget after Guinness.
In 1997 Boddingtons sales peaked, and 1998 saw a drop in sales of 10 per cent. Boddingtons had been turned into: "a fashion product ... and as with all fashion products, the drinkers moved on". In 1998 production of the
Flowers
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism ...
ale brands was moved to Strangeways. Boddingtons' share of the UK ale market grew to 4.9 per cent in 1998–1999, and sales grew by 7.3 percent during 1999–2000.
Meanwhile, in 1995 the independent owner of the 450-strong former Boddingtons tied estate, The Boddington Group, was taken over by
Greenalls.
Interbrew takeover
In May 2000 the Whitbread Beer Company was acquired by the Belgian brewer
Interbrew
Interbrew is subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV is based in Breda, Netherlands. It has one subsidiary, Ambev S.A. of São Paulo, Brazil.
Brands
Interbrew brands have historically included Budweiser, Stella Artois, Boddingtons, Beck's, S ...
, which owned
Stella Artois
Stella Artois ( ) is a pilsner beer, first brewed in 1926 by Brouwerij Artois in Leuven, Belgium. In its original form, the beer is 5.2 per cent ABV, the country's standard for pilsners. The beer is also sold in other countries like the UK, Ir ...
. At that time over ten percent of Boddingtons production was exported to some 40 countries worldwide, including China, the United States, Taiwan and the West Indies. The Strangeways Brewery kegging facility closed in February 2003 with the loss of 50 jobs. In August 2003, amidst falling sales, Interbrew relaunched the cask product in the North West of England, with an increased strength.
The relaunch was unsuccessful and the changes were reversed.
In September 2004 the owners (now known as
InBev
InBev () is a brewing company that resulted from the merger between Belgium-based company Interbrew and Brazilian brewer AmBev which took place in 2004. It existed independently until the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, which formed Anheus ...
) announced plans to close the Strangeways Brewery and move most production from Manchester to
Magor in
South Wales and
Samlesbury
Samlesbury () is a village and civil parish in South Ribble, Lancashire, England. Samlesbury Hall, a historic house, is in the village, as is Samlesbury Aerodrome and a large modern brewery owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev. The population at the ...
,
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...
, with the loss of 60 jobs. Two years earlier the brewery had employed 250 people.
Boddingtons
cask ale production, which accounted for less than 10 per cent of output, was moved to Hydes Brewery in
Moss Side
Moss Side is an inner-city area of Manchester, England, south of the city centre, It had a population of 20,745 at the 2021 census. Moss Side is bounded by Hulme to the north, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Rusholme and Fallowfield to the east, W ...
.
The closure plan was made despite the company admitting the brewery was profitable but the brewery site had become a valuable property asset and was subsequently sold for £12 million to developers.
A spokesman for the firm argued: "
hebuilding was built in the
Victorian times
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardi ...
and it is an old historic brewery but it was a victim of its age. It is an inflexible brewery – it can't bottle or can and customer needs have moved on".
Production ended in February 2005 and the brewery was demolished in 2007. ''
Bloomberg Businessweek
''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...
'' described the move by InBev as "unsentimental".
In May 2010 it was speculated in ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' that InBev (
Anheuser-Busch InBev from 2008 onwards) would attempt to sell the Boddingtons brand to another brewer after its failed attempt to sell the UK rights to
Bass ale
Bass or Basses may refer to:
Fish
* Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species
Music
* Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range:
** Bass (instrument), including:
** Acoustic bass gui ...
.
The newspaper was damning of what it perceived as InBev's mismanagement of the brand, which had "declined under AB InBev's hands. The brand was once a leading part of the old Whitbread Beer Company, but its fortunes had dwindled since the closure in 2005 of the Strangeways Brewery."
In 2010 Boddingtons was the sixth-highest selling bitter in the United Kingdom, although sales had dropped by almost three-quarters since the takeover by
Anheuser–Busch InBev in 2000. In July 2011 AB InBev's UK president Stuart MacFarlane claimed "We still believe in the brand" whilst admitting to not advertising the brand for five years, instead reaping the rewards of memories of earlier advertising. Contract brewing of Boddingtons Cask continued until March 2012 when production of the beer ended.
Production was around 250,000 hectolitres in 2012, with around 80 per cent of production destined for the UK market, and around 20 per cent for export markets such as Taiwan, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
Beers
![Boddingtons Pub Ale](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Boddingtons_Pub_Ale.JPG)
Boddingtons has a distinctive straw-golden coloured body with a creamy white head, which in its modern form is achieved by the addition of nitrogen in an attempt to replicate the traditional head from serving the cask beer through a
sparkler
A sparkler is a type of hand-held firework that burns slowly while emitting bright, intense colored flames, sparks, and other effects.
Sparklers are particularly popular with children. In the United Kingdom, a sparkler is often used by chil ...
.
* Boddingtons Draught Bitter (3.5%
ABV
Alcohol by volume (abbreviated as ABV, abv, or alc/vol) is a standard measure of how much alcohol (ethanol) is contained in a given volume of an alcoholic beverage (expressed as a volume percent). It is defined as the number of millilitres (mL) o ...
)
:The nitrogenated and pasteurised variant of the beer available in kegs and cans. It is brewed in Samlesbury. The canned variant, launched in 1991, contains a
widget to give the beer a creamy white head. The beer's ABV was reduced from 3.8% to 3.5% in late 2008. On draught in the United Kingdom it is typically served at 5 to 7
degrees Celsius
The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The ...
, although an Extra Cold variant served at 3 to 5 degrees Celsius has been available since 2006. Its taste, or perceived lack of it, has been criticised by some, with
Andrew Jefford describing it as a "blandly foamy nitrokeg travesty of the original
ask conditioned version.
* Boddingtons Pub Ale (4.6% ABV)
:A higher ABV version of Boddingtons Draught Bitter, brewed since 1993 for export markets. It was available in the United Kingdom from 1995–6 as Boddingtons Export, on draught and in widget bottles.
>
* Boddingtons Manchester Gold (4.8% ABV)
:After Export was delisted by British supermarkets in 1996,
Boddingtons launched a 4.8% hybrid ale with a £4m advertising campaign referencing the Calvin Klein ''Obsession'' perfume adverts. Manchester Gold was still being advertised in August 1997 but was withdrawn soon afterwards.
Advertising
The Boddingtons two bees logo was introduced in 1900. The bees are a symbol of Manchester, from a time when it was a "hive of industry", but the two bees also represent a
pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
on the company name of Boddingtons Breweries.
Boddingtons largely eschewed
above the line advertising until 1987, when it was first advertised on
Granada television in the North West of England.
The tagline from 1987 until 1991 was "If you don't get Boddies, you'll just get bitter". Under Whitbread's custodianship the comedian
Frankie Howerd
Francis Alick Howard (6 March 1917 – 19 April 1992), better known by his stage-name Frankie Howerd, was an English actor and comedian.
Early life
Howerd was born the son of soldier Francis Alfred William (1887–1934)England & Wales, Deat ...
fronted the campaign in a series of six television advertisements which mainly aired in the North West in 1990–1991.
Lowe Howard-Spink was the
advertising agency
An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...
responsible for the Howerd advertisements.
From July 1991 until 1999, a series of Boddingtons advertisements created by the
Bartle Bogle Hegarty
Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) is a British global advertising agency. Founded in 1982 by British ad men John Bartle, Nigel Bogle, and John Hegarty, BBH has offices in London, New York City, Singapore, Shanghai, Mumbai, Stockholm and Los Angeles ...
(BBH) agency used "The Cream of Manchester" tagline. The campaign, credited with revitalising the image of Manchester, was arguably third behind
Manchester United and ''
Coronation Street'' in raising the city's profile.
Originally a set of print advertisements, the campaign was extended to television in 1992. The television advertisements featured beautiful women with unlikely
Mancunian accents and "achieved the seemingly impossible task of making bitter glamorous".
The most famous television advertisement featured a glamorous couple on-board
gondola
The gondola (, ; vec, góndoła ) is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian lagoon. It is typically propelled by a gondolier, who uses a rowing oar, which is not fastened to the hull, ...
s on Manchester's
River Irwell, in a parody of a well-known "just one
Cornetto" ice cream advertisement. According to the ''
Manchester Evening News
The ''Manchester Evening News'' (''MEN'') is a regional daily newspaper covering Greater Manchester in North West England, founded in 1868. It is published Monday–Saturday; a Sunday edition, the ''MEN on Sunday'', was launched in February 20 ...
'', "it told the world something about the reinvention of the murky old city, that its once-filthy waterway could almost pass for
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
."
The series won several international advertising awards for BBH. The brand's creaminess was emphasised through items such as face cream, ice cream, sun cream and whipped cream. Managing director of Whitbread,
Miles Templeman, explained that:
We were thinking how to turn a second-rate north-west brand into something more stylish, to make it more appealing again. BBH thought of focusing on the creamy aspect, of selling a beer like a face cream.
A previously unknown
Melanie Sykes
Melanie Ann Sykes (born 7 August 1970) is an English television and radio presenter. She is best known for co-hosting '' Today with Des and Mel'' with Des O'Connor and '' Let's Do Lunch'' with Gino D'Acampo. She also co-hosted '' Going Out with ...
launched her career as a
television presenter following her appearances in the adverts from 1996 until 1999.
Animated television advertisements starring the
transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...
playboy
''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...
cow Graham Heffer ran from 1999 until 2002. The adverts attracted complaints from the public for allegedly promoting
bestiality,
homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to pe ...
and
drug-taking.
Boddingtons become an official partner of the 2002
XVII Commonwealth Games held in Manchester in a deal worth at least £1 million.
To mark the occasion, a special Boddingtons 5% ABV Commonwealth Ale cask ale was produced for the North West of England, and subsequently launched nationwide. The last Boddingtons television advertising campaign in 2005 was criticised for capitalising on the beer's Manchester heritage with a
Happy Mondays
Happy Mondays are an English rock band formed in Salford in 1980. The original line-up was Shaun Ryder (vocals), his brother Paul Ryder (bass), Gary Whelan (drums), Paul Davis (keyboard), and Mark Day (guitar). Mark "Bez" Berry later joine ...
soundtrack, even though production had moved out of the city. Mike Thompson, a former worker at the brewery and representative of the
Transport & General Workers' Union, said:
This is at best cynical and at worst a slur on our great city, its heritage and the Strangeways workers. People have lost their livelihoods because of how this company has behaved. They will not be best pleased at what we can only see as pouring salt on the wounds.
References
Further reading
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External links
Official website
{{Anheuser–Busch InBev
History of Manchester
Defunct breweries of the United Kingdom
Manufacturing companies based in Manchester
Food and drink companies established in 1853
Breweries in England
British companies established in 1853
1853 establishments in England