Think Global - Ignore Local?

The twisted priorities of the global brewers can be measured by a series of extremely expensive advertisements for the Interbrew brand Leffe in the quality press. In the Guardian, an ad for Leffe measures six columns by 40 centimetres, which is close to two-thirds of a page. Interbrew is spending �1 million over the next three months to promote Leffe. It is, according to an Interbrew spokesman, a beer for the over-35s who engage in such deeply intellectual pursuits as counting the grey hairs in their fathers' heads. Someone from Interbrew is welcome to come and count the grey hairs in my head. Many of them have been created by the sheer frustration of trying to find a decent pint of Draught Bass to drink.

Last year, Interbrew announced it planned to spend several million pounds on a special promotion for Draught Bass and Boddingtons, starting with giant posters at London railways stations over the Christmas period.

Friends in London told me they saw no such posters last December. Belatedly, posters did start to appear in the spring of this year. I complained at the time that the message, based around a micrometer, was so obscure that few people would appreciate it was an advertisement for beer.

I'm told that Interbrew has sponsored golf tournaments under the Draught Bass name. But as I have neither the time nor the inclination to stroll across a bumpy park knocking a white ball into holes with a walking stick, this pleasure has passed me by.

Meanwhile, the much-vaunted relaunch of Boddingtons is confined to North-west England. Neither the beer nor its promotion is in evidence south of Crewe Junction.

Without doubt, someone from Interbrew will write in outlining the range and visibility of its Draught Bass and Boddingtons promotions and the company's devotion to the brands.

Any such claims will cut no ice with me. The support for the British brands is pathetic when compared to the promotion for Leffe. According to Interbrew, the speciality beer market is growing at a fast pace and such beers as Leffe have become flagship brands for the group.

This makes by blood boil. Leffe is a beer without credibility. The stained glass image on the bottle gives the impression the beer belongs to the group of ales produced by Belgian monks in small monastic brewhouses. In fact, the Leffe monastery was destroyed during the Napoleonic wars. The beer was produced for the monks by a small commercial brewery, which was taken over and eventually became part of Interbrew.

So forget about monks pressing barley and hops by hand and patiently making small batches of beer in between prayers and Bible readings. Leffe is a big commercial brand made by the world's biggest brewer.

Draught Bass and Boddingtons, on the other hand, are two superb, traditional British cask ales. They were once flagship brands for the entire cask sector but under the uncaring hands of Bass and Whitbread the beers withered on the vine as the groups turned their attention to lager, alcopops and nitro-keg before deciding to quit brewing.

When the beers passed to Interbrew, the Belgian group did nothing for a couple of years and then announced the much-vaunted but largely invisible promotions for the brands.

Leffe, on the other hand, is enjoying highly visible support, with the equivalent of an annual spend of �4 million. Anyone who sees the ads, featuring half empty glasses, will grasp the message that this is about beer: no micrometers, no doubts.

In the meantime, Draught Bass sales go on declining slowly but inexorably to below 100,000 barrels a year while the bulk of Boddingtons sales is in nitro-keg form.

For Interbrew to describe Leffe as a flagship brand is to insult British beer lovers. Draught Bass once sold more than a million barrels year. It has been sidelined as Flash Harrys in Interbrew's marketing department have concentrated on boosting Stella Artois and Leffe, beers without a whiff of heritage or credibility in this country.

Perhaps, before it's too late, someone at Interbrew would like to run Draught Bass up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.