Black Label

This article is about the beer brand. For the article about the bike club, see Black Label Bike Club

Black Label

Type	Beer
Manufacturer	Carling Brewing Company
Distributor	Carling Brewing Company
Country of origin	Canada
Introduced	1927

Black Label is a Canadian brand of lager distributed by Carling and well-known throughout the former British Empire. In several countries it is also known as Carling Black Label, and in Sweden it is known as Carling Premier. However, in the UK it is now known as just 'Carling' in response to public demand for a snappier call at the bar (according to the company).

Carling brands are currently owned by the Molson Coors Brewing Company. In South Africa it is distributed by SABMiller.

History

Main article: Carling

Although its original focus was on ale, Carling has been brewing lager-style beers since the 1870s. In 1927, as part of an overall corporate rebranding effort under new president J. Innes Carling, the company renamed it's already popular "Black & White Lager" to "Black Label."

Three years later Carling was purchased by Toronto business tycoon E.P. Taylor who merged the company into his Canadian Breweries Limited, which grew to be (at least for a time) the world's largest brewing company. Under Taylor, Black Label was promoted as CBL's flagship brand and went on to become the world's first beer to be brewed on a mass international scale, becoming particularly popular in Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Canada

In response to a shift in popular taste away from ale, Carling added a three-story lager plant to their main London, Ontario brewery in 1877. Carling's Lager (later renamed Carling's Bavarian Stock Lager, and then Carling's Imperial Club Lager) was the company's first lager brand. Carling's Black & White Lager was introduced in the 1920s and later renamed Black Label Lager, in contrast to their recently launched Red Cap Ale.

Due to its strength and price the brand quickly became popular with the country's working-class, perhaps most famously among the loggers and miners of Northern Ontario where the brand gained a tough, blue collar image.

Around 1990, Black Label had probably one of the most successful advertising campaigns ever made in Canada which used the phrase 'The Legend is Black'. The genius of the advertising campaign came from the tendency for people in alternative music bars on Queen Street West in Toronto to drink Black Label because it was cheap & as way to dissociate themselves from mainstream people drinking mainstream beer.

United States

After the repeal of prohibition in 1933, the Peerless Motor Car Company, looking for a way to diversify in the poor car market of the depression, purchased the American rights to Carling's formulas, identifying labels, and trademarks. Technicians and brew-masters were sent from Canada to convert a Peerless plant in Cleveland, Ohio into the Brewing Corporation of America. They first tried just brewing Carling's Red Cap Ale, but sales were too slow to maintain the brewery and sales didn't climb until the introduction of Black Label lager. The philosophy behind Black Label was to have a high quality lager that was available nationwide, but with a locally brewed budget price. The strategy worked and the next several decades led to rapid growth and expansion for the brewery and the Carling Black Label brand.

When Carling stopped producing Black Label to focus on a more profitable lager, they found their sales plummeting and re-introduced Black Label with a beautiful blonde named Mabel, portrayed by Jeanne Goodspeed. The twenty year marketing campaign cemented the name in the popular culture of America.

In 1979, after several years of intense pressure from the larger American Brewers Miller and Anheuser-Busch Carling-National was bought out by the Heileman Brewing Co. of LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Carling and the Black Label brand are currently owned by the Molson Coors Brewing Company. In the U.S., the Black Label brand is owned by the Pabst Brewing Company. Though no longer widely distributed in the U.S., Black Label remains the official beer of Beer Frisbee.

United Kingdom

Black Label was introduced to Britain in 1952. Originally, it was only available in bottles, but in 1965 The Hill Top in Sheffield became the first pub to pour Carling on draught.

In the 1970s Carling Black Label was driven to great heights, due partly to increased advertising support, in particular the classic “I bet he drinks” series of adverts, and partly with the launch of Carling Black Label in cans. Cans were important to Carling’s success as they helped open up the “take home” market.

The “I bet he drinks” series of ads showed someone doing something cool, clever or difficult, and having a bystander say "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label". Many of the adverts featured comedians Mark Arden and Stephen Frost (alias The Oblivion Boys) delivering the classic punchline. Largely because of this advertising campaign, it became Britain's best-selling brand of beer in 1971.

Carling has remained Britain’s best selling beer since 1985. The “Black Label” was dropped from the name in 1997 and the brand's logo was updated.

South Africa

In South Africa, Black Label began to take on a different tone with the anti-apartheid movements. Not only did it have more alcohol than the other brands of beer (5.5% as opposed to 5% noted in the popular advertising catch phrase "only hard working students deserve an extra 0.5 percent") in the country, but the connotation of black to the racial issue became a point of pride to the native Africans. It used to be sold with the motto, "America's Lusty, Lively Beer", perhaps in reference to Canada, though it is seldom seen in the United States. The motto came from an older advertising campaign in the United States, of which many pieces of advertising can still be purchased. The beer is commonly referred to as simply 'Black label' or, even more simply, in order to provide a snappy call at the bar, 'label' by South Africans. It also goes by the name 'Zamalek', 'quickcharge', 'silvertop' or '1011'. (10-11 Malt Liquor is a Carling's brand.) Another famous Afrikaans slogan for Black Label in South Africa is, "Black Label sê die bybel", which means "The Bible says one should drink Black Label".

The beer was parodied by South African t-shirt company laughitoff. The slogan was changed to "Black Labour, White Guilt" which led to an unsuccessful copyright infringement law suit from SABMiller.

External links

• Official Carling Lager website
• Fan tribute & history website