Summer cider series: Q&A with Westons brand manager Matthew Langley

Cider is possibly the oldest of all alcoholic drinks but it is certainly the oldest alcoholic drink produced in the UK. One of the longest-serving commercial producers still active today is Westons, founded in Herefordshire in 1880.

These days, its traditionally produced draughts and bottled ciders are still on the top of the market, competing fiercely with newcomers from all corners of the world.

Westons brand manager Matthew Langley believes that tradition and a heritage of quality is the unique selling point which appeals to cider consumers in the UK.

Even though the challenge of surviving as a traditional cider producer in the UK is getting harder, Langley is convinced that Westons has what it takes to fight against the wild and young generation of producers entering into the British market today.

Elisabeth Fischer: What differentiates Westons from other similar brands?

Matthew Langley: Westons is still a family-run business and is still owned by the same family who founded it in 1880. That brings a view for the long term as well as a natural passion to the business you rarely find anywhere else.

There’s this natural passion for cider and this natural passion for great quality. Those are the things that the family and Westons is very reluctant to compromise on.

EF: How is your marketing strategy conveying this philosophy?

ML: We build all our communication, marketing strategies and advertisement around the quality message. Although we have different strategies in place, quality is the one constant across all our communication.

For instance, you’ll find an awful lot of cider companies that are out at music festivals, which they use to promote their products. This is all very well but music festivals are traditionally not a very high-quality environment, so we went out and specifically sought out a premium event to get involved with.

As a Henry Westons brand we now sponsor the Cheltenham jazz and literature festivals. They provide us with an opportunity to provide our customers with a premium experience and at the same time it builds up a premium audience.

EF: Is your key target audience different to other cider producers?

ML: Yes, our target audience is a more premium consumer. Most of our products will be bought by a slightly older audience in comparison to what we call the newer cider products. We have a core consumer age profile of around 34-45 years; whereas you find that the core consumer profile of a lot of the other cider companies is 25-35.

EF: How do you come up with new marketing ideas and strategies for Westons cider?

ML: We’re always sitting down, having meetings and discussing every thought – we’re just a passionate bunch and end up debating for ages and often great ideas will drop out of that.

For example, when we were looking at sponsoring a sporting event we were looking to do something different with sports but we also wanted to so something with summer.

We brainstormed it and one of us suggested that the natural summer sport in the UK is cricket. So we just went and approached the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and it ended up with Westons becoming the official cider for England cricket.

EF: How have Twitter and Facebook changed the marketing of Westons and the way you approach consumers?

ML: I believe what social media channels allow us to do is to build a conversation with our consumers and our customers. It’s something we’ve not previously been able to do.

It allows you to build a dialogue and you get instant feedback from customers. It’s a great way of cross-working with our customers, understanding them and eventually building a closer relationship with them.

EF: How do you approach social responsibility for alcohol when marketing cider?

ML: Like any responsible business we would never market alcohol irresponsibly. We don’t encourage overconsumption, we encourage sensible consumption. That’s what is involved in any of our consumer messages. It’s a responsible message and we do feel it is a reflection of being a family business.

EF: What can we expect to see from Westons in 2013?

ML: You can expect to see lots of things, which I can’t reveal now. But we’ve got lots of plans to put our business forward. The one thing we are definitely going to be looking at is to explore international expansion for Westons in greater depth.