Jolly times for Danish cola and Tuborg’s unusual promotion

Brewing giant Carlsberg opens campaign to get young people to drink less

Carlsberg – famously Denmark’s best-known producer of beer – this week launched a major campaign aimed at reducing consumption of beer among young people, or at least asking them to think more carefully about it.

That seems counter to the interests of the company at first glance, but the Drik med respekt ‘Drink with Respect’ campaign, which comes from the brewery’s Tuborg brand is perhaps less surprising when framed with political pressure and trends in Danish youth demographics.

Tuborg’s campaign sets the company against peer pressure encouraging young people to binge drink, calling for moderation.

“This is our biggest campaign ever with this kind of message,” Peter Haahr Nielsen, CEO of Carlsberg Denmark, told broadcaster TV2.

Carlsberg has meanwhile agreed a partnership with pub chain Rekom, which owns 89 bars across Denmark. The partnership will see increased efforts to promote alcohol-free products – which Carlsberg also produces – at the bars, including by lowering the price.

Denmark has seen recent debate on its youth drinking culture, notably in relation to legal age limits.

This month, new rules came into effect banning sales of drinks with more than six percent alcohol to youths aged 16 to 18, who could previously buy drinks containing up to 16.5 percent alcohol. 

In addition, police can now nominate specified “nightlife zones” in which bars will be forbidden from selling alcohol to under-18s after 10pm.

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Carlsberg’s apparent willingness to join in with the effort to limit youth binge drinking does not mean it supports political intervention, however.

“I’d rather say that we’re aware of our responsibility as a brewery. There’s plenty of evidence that we can make a difference,” Haahr Nielsen told TV2, when asked whether the campaign was pre-empting further political debate.

According to Carlsberg’s own survey, a large proportion of young people in Denmark want to rethink binge drinking culture, TV2 writes.

Advocacy organisation Alkohol & Samfund said it wants it to become harder for young people to buy beer and other types of alcohol in shops.

“We know what it takes to reduce alcohol consumption among young people. That being less accessibility, meaning a higher age limit for younger people buying alcohol, and less marketing,” the organisation’s director, Maria Koch Aabel, told TV2.

Sales of alcohol-free beer are growing in Denmark with several new brands entering the market in recent years. Nevertheless, alcohol-free products only comprise four percent of total sales.

Carlsberg says it wants to grow that share in the coming years, targeting five percent next year and six percent by 2027.

“We want to sell beer to Danes, but we don’t want to contribute to harmful overconsumption,” Haahr Nielsen said.

“We have plenty of alternatives, like alcohol-free beer,” he added.

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The Tuborg campaign is aimed at young people over the age of 20. Although alcohol consumption has been declining in recent years in this age group, it is still high compared to other countries according to TV2.

Alkohol & Samfund says it wants more focus on much younger drinkers, around the age of 15.

“We are one of the few countries where serving alcohol is allowed at further education institutions,” Aabel said.

“It’s not that we’re saying they shouldn’t drink at all. It’s about making sure they don’t start until they’re 18, and that they drink less,” she said.

Haahr Nielsen noted that the campaign is targeted at people in their early twenties because it is illegal for breweries to market to people under the age of 18.

Sales of nostalgic Danish cola fizz

Denmark’s Jolly Cola has often been seen as something of a joke product or at least an inferior one compared to the likes of Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Something you only drank when spending your pocket money in a kiosk as a kid.

But the product seems to have been given a new lease of life, and may well have to thank Denmark’s boycott movement against American products, which we wrote about in an earlier edition of this column.

READ ALSO: Can a Danish boycott on US products have any effect?

Sales of Jolly Cola at the Rema 1000 supermarket chain were 13 times higher last month than during the same period last year, Jonas Schrøder, Rema’s director of communications, said in a social media post.

Other outlets including Coop and Fleggaard have also reported significant increases in demand for the Danish cola, newspaper BT reported recently.

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Bryggeriet Vestfyen, the brewery which makes Jolly Cola, says it has never seen a sales trend like it.

“It’s getting out of hand. We’ve had hundreds of enquiries about Jolly Cola, recently, mainly from shopkeepers calling us,” senior brand manager Thomas Lindegaard told BT last month.

The sudden surge in demand has taken Bryggeriet Vestfyen by surprise. With no stores carrying Jolly Cola as a part of their permanent range, many consumers are reported to have searched in vain for the Danish product to replace the American cola they are now opting out of.

As a result, the brewery has had to move quickly to source packaging and the necessary ingredients to increase its production.

“We were already seeing growth last year, but we have a bit of extra tailwind from an unexpected direction right now, and that wasn’t something we saw coming,” Lindegaard told BT.