Specialty beers
without the bla bla

Background

Since a few years, the Dutch beer landscape has changed. Gone are times where people would just order a regular brew - nowadays, they carefully go through the beer selection to find that perfect triple hopped imperial IPA. While it makes the world of beers more interesting and varied, it becomes harder for the sellers of these suds to know every beers’ individual characteristic like ingredients, taste and smell. FX Agency and HEINEKEN Netherlands joined forces to teach account managers about the beer landscape in the web series “Klare Taal” (clear language).

Our approach

The account managers of HEINEKEN Netherlands work every day to bring the beer and cider brands of the broad HEINEKEN portfolio to the assortment of Dutch outlets like hotels, restaurants or bars. This way they answer to the growing demand for specialty beers. But to sell this variety of drinks, you need to know them. Not only their names, but their smell, taste characteristics, and even the type of glass that they need to be served in. Account managers are nevertheless not interested in marketing language or hefty analyses of a drink. They usually have enough years of experience under their belt, or just don’t agree with the difficulty of selling (or advising) about specialty beers. Moreover, the typical account manager like to make their own decisions and is critical about anything that is imposed on them. This is something we realised early in the process; the target audience is the most important part of this project.

We developed an easygoing, no-nonsense way to explain beer characteristics to our audience. Beers without bullshit, if you will. The actual name turned out a bit less blunt: Klare Taal. The formulation of what the account manager needs, and a wink towards the process of separating hops from wort while brewing a beer, which is called clearing. It set the tone for the series: clear, personal, unpolished, and full of humor