VB will have a massive brand resurgence over the next five years as blokes look to slake a thirst in man's time honoured manner. The Future Laboratory co-founder Martin Raymond's conviction is such that he has laid a $300 bet with AdNews.
Raymond said key trends for 2013 were that consumers sought personality from brands. Growing tired of fine wine and surf and turf, he said that swathes of Australian men would seek a "return to doing small blokish things with their mates". Noting the craft beer movement in the US, where "guys are now drinking the same beers that their granddads drank", he said a "VB and a sandwich" would be the new order of the day.
"VB has that personality - the [equivalent of] the bloke next door," he said. Raymond suggested that return to "old mates" would come from two groups - those in their mid-twenties experiencing their first pangs of nostaligia, and those in their forties.
The latter he suggested, were being squeezed both by supporting their children, and their own parents, "who had spent everything".
Other key trends for the year ahead would be a shift to fun and fantasy in content marketing - away from truth, worthiness and realism - and retailers and brands co-habiting to maximise opportunity and reduce costs. He called that 'symbiotic branding'.
Crucially, instead of "whinging about the internet", high street retailers must maximise in-store experiences "to the level of an event space" in order to compliment online sales. Otherwise they should "get out of the game," warned Raymond.
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