🧪 Top of Mind vs Top of Heart

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Beer culture is huge in Australia. We’ve got a vibrant craft beer scene with new brands launching all the time, appealing to younger customers with better tasting products, better looking packaging, and better executed marketing.

But despite all that, there’s a group of legacy breweries who still hold majority of the market. They’ve kept this strong position by cleverly linking themselves to fundamental elements of Australian culture. They’ve won hearts, while everyone else is chasing minds. There’s a lot their strategies can teach us about brand defensibility in rapidly changing markets.

I had a lot of fun writing this one, hope you enjoy it!

— Isaac

Quick Hits

• How to build brand with culture [Fast Company]

• Audible turns audiobooks into compelling social content [Adweek]

• AI-assisted shopping will change the retail landscape [The Drum]

• How not to announce “AI-first” strategies: Shopify vs Duolingo [Linkedin]

• Hailey Bieber's make-up brand Rhode sells to e.l.f. for $1 billion [BBC]

Top of Mind vs Top of Heart

My partner's dad has excellent taste in wine. He’s got two huge wine fridges in the living room and has more winery memberships than I have streaming subscriptions.

But walk into any pub with him and his first drink is always the same.

VB.

Not because it's the best drink available. Not because he can't afford something better. Simply because it's what he's always done.

While marketers obsess over winning younger demographics and chasing viral moments, there's a powerful lesson hiding in plain sight at the bottom of every beer bottle.

New research from Tracksuit reveals that 55+ males are the fortress defending legacy beer brands like VB, Tooheys and XXXX. These aren't just product preferences. They're cultural allegiances that have withstood decades of challenger brands, marketing innovations and changing consumer trends.

What beer loyalty teaches us about brand defensibility goes far beyond breweries. It's a masterclass in how brands that live in hearts, not just minds, create genuine competitive moats in an age where every brand feels one viral moment away from disruption.

The Fortress Demographics

Walk into a Queensland pub and you'll see XXXX's power. While craft breweries fight for 2-3% market share across broad demographics, XXXX commands 10% preference among its fortress demographic of 55+ males. In Victoria, VB holds 9%. In New South Wales, Tooheys maintains 7%.

These numbers reveal concentrated, unwavering loyalty that challenger brands can't beat with better products or clever campaigns. Plus, 34% of survey respondents don't drink beer at all. The beer market isn't just competitive, it's actually shrinking.

But these heritage brands maintain their stronghold with surgical precision. This demographic concentration reveals something crucial about brand strength that most tracking misses. These aren't brands winning through broad appeal or innovative marketing. They're surviving through depth of connection with a specific audience that views brand switching as almost culturally treasonous.

That's the difference between having customers and having believers.

The Infrastructure of Hearts

What these heritage brands understood decades ago is something most modern marketers miss entirely. True defensibility comes from becoming part of the cultural infrastructure, not just sitting on top of it.

The genius here isn't the marketing, it's the long-term thinking that built cultural infrastructure over decades rather than chasing quarterly awareness spikes. These brands understood that sustainable competitive advantage comes from creating switching costs that are psychological rather than functional.

When changing brands feels like betraying your identity, you've built a moat that challengers can't simply outspend or out-innovate their way across. This is the infrastructure of hearts, and hearts don't respond to rational arguments.

When Better Products Meet Unshakeable Loyalty

The modern startup playbook assumes that better products, slicker marketing and viral moments can disrupt any incumbent. The beer category reveals why that assumption often fails against brands that own hearts, not just minds.

Countless craft breweries have launched with superior ingredients, innovative flavours and sophisticated branding. Many achieve impressive awareness metrics and strong sales in specific channels. But very few have managed to convert rusted-on VB drinkers to their cause.

This isn't because their beer tastes worse or their marketing lacks creativity. It's because they're trying to win a product battle against brands that won the battle for hearts decades ago. When someone orders a VB, they're not choosing a drink. They're signalling membership in a specific cultural group with shared values, experiences and rituals.

That's why flashy campaigns and viral moments struggle against entrenched loyalty. You can capture minds without changing hearts, especially when those hearts are tied to identity rather than rational evaluation.

But there's one exception that proves the rule.

The Great Northern Breakthrough

Great Northern achieved something remarkable in Queensland, 16% preference in a state where XXXX has had over a century to build cultural infrastructure. How did a relatively new brand crack the fortress?

They didn't try to beat XXXX at its own game. While XXXX owned pub culture and State of Origin, Great Northern positioned itself around Queensland's outdoor lifestyle; fishing, camping and outdoor adventures. Their fishing sponsorships and regional marketing created alternative cultural infrastructure.

Rather than competing for share of existing cultural moments, they expanded the cultural context where beer consumption made sense. This is strategic brilliance disguised as marketing. Great Northern's success reveals a crucial insight. The most effective way to challenge brands that own hearts isn't through direct competition, it's through finding new hearts to win.

Top of Mind vs Top of Heart

Traditional brand tracking often measures the wrong things when dealing with truly defensive brands. Awareness, consideration and even trial can be misleading metrics when you're dealing with brands that live in people's hearts rather than just their heads.

The difference between "top of mind" and "top of heart" is the difference between knowing about a brand and being loyal to it. Most challenger brands achieve the first without ever approaching the second.

Top of mind is rational. It's about recall, recognition and conscious consideration. It responds well to media spend, innovative creative and strategic positioning. Top of heart is emotional. It's about identity, belonging and unconscious preference. It's built through consistent cultural presence over extended periods and defended through psychological switching costs that rational arguments can't overcome.

Heritage beer brands occupy both spaces simultaneously, but their real strength lies in hearts. When someone's been drinking VB for 40 years they're not evaluating alternatives, they're executing a ritual that reinforces their sense of self.

This explains why these brands can survive poor marketing campaigns, product missteps and even significant price increases. The relationship transcends rational evaluation because it's fundamentally about identity rather than utility. Top of mind is rational. Top of heart is tribal. And tribal always wins.

The Strategic Framework

Understanding the difference between heritage and hype creates a decision-making framework that goes far beyond the beer category.

Challenge adjacent, not direct. Direct challenges against culturally embedded brands are usually futile and always expensive. If your strategy is to convince VB drinkers that your beer tastes better, you're fighting the wrong battle. Appealing to minds when the decision lives in hearts.

The smarter play is what Great Northern executed, adjacent positioning that owns new cultural contexts rather than competing in established ones. Find the spaces where incumbent brands don't exist and build your own cultural infrastructure. Don't try to convince iPhone users that Android is technically superior. Focus on adjacent use cases where Android's advantages matter more than Apple's cultural positioning.

Build infrastructure, not awareness. The challenge for modern brands is building meaningful cultural associations without decades of history. The key is consistency and authenticity over extended periods, not viral moments or quarterly campaigns.

Look at what (wildly successful) non-alcoholic beer brands like Heaps Normal are doing. They're not trying to replace VB in pub culture. They're creating new cultural contexts around health-conscious socialising and mindful consumption. This is category creation rather than category competition and it's proving far more effective than going head-to-head with incumbents.

The Double-Edged Sword

The most successful heritage brands evolve their cultural positioning while maintaining their core identity. But evolution is tricky. Move too fast and you alienate your core, move too slow and you become irrelevant to everyone else. The brands that navigate this successfully understand something fundamental. Culture is always changing, but the human need for belonging never does.

Beyond the Brewery

This battle between heritage and hype isn't really about old vs new. It's about depth vs surface, belonging vs awareness, hearts vs minds.

In our age of infinite choice and constant disruption, the deepest loyalties are often the most local and specific. The brands that survive aren't necessarily the biggest or the most innovative. They're the ones that become part of how people see themselves. They become tied to individual identities.

Building this kind of cultural infrastructure takes time, consistency and authentic understanding of your audience's identity beyond their purchasing behaviour. It means thinking like an anthropologist, not just a marketer. The strategic imperative is clear. Build cultural infrastructure, not just brand awareness. Create belonging, not just consideration. Win hearts, not just minds.

Because when you're competing against brands that live in people's hearts, all the clever marketing in the world won't help you. But when you become part of who people are, no amount of disruption can dislodge you.

That's the real lesson from my partner's dad and his unwavering VB loyalty. In the battle between heritage and hype, heritage doesn't just win, it endures. But it takes decades to get there.

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