Victoria Bitter Brews VB Tea to Keep Cricket Fans Awake Through the Ashes
Victoria Bitter launched VB Tea in July 2019 in Australia, a limited-edition black tea infused with Victoria Bitter Super Pride Hops, created by Clemenger BBDO and designed to keep Australian cricket fans alert through the late-night and early-morning hours of an Ashes series broadcast live from England.
The product was as deliberate as it was absurd. Packaged in boxes of 24 pyramid tea bags and retailing at A$10 per box excluding delivery, VB Tea was sold exclusively through the Victoria Bitter website on a direct-to-consumer basis, with availability limited by a clear while-stocks-last caveat. The positioning was precise: English Breakfast tea had long been a cultural shorthand for everything Australian cricket supporters were up against when England hosted, and VB Tea recast that familiar domestic staple as an act of patriotic defiance rather than passive comfort. The campaign was timed to land ahead of the 2019 Ashes series, grounding the product in one of the most emotionally charged fixtures on the Australian sporting calendar.
The campaign comprised a film advertisement as its primary media asset, submitted to the archive almost six years ago and documented on Clapboard.com. The film executed the creative premise with the irreverence that defines Victoria Bitter's long-standing brand voice in the Australian market, presenting the tea not as a departure from the beer brand's identity but as a logical extension of its working-class, sports-invested character. In a market where mainstream beer volumes were already under structural pressure, the campaign offered the brand a culturally timely way to remain relevant to its core audience without abandoning its roots.
Victoria Bitter operates inside one of the most concentrated beer markets in the developed world. In Australia, Carlton and United Breweries, operating under Anheuser-Busch InBev, held approximately 47.7% market share by brewer in 2019, while Lion, backed by Kirin, held approximately 40.9%, according to reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald. Together those two groups controlled approximately 88.6% of Australian beer sales, per the same source, leaving Victoria Bitter competing for attention in a market where scale dominates and brand differentiation is hard-won.
The structural challenge runs deeper than market share. Mainstream and regular beer volumes in Australia faced sustained pressure from changing consumer preferences including premiumisation, craft beer growth, wine, spirits, and lower-alcohol alternatives, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC News. In an earlier period, the regular-beer category had contracted by approximately five to seven percent year-on-year, per the Sydney Morning Herald, signalling that brands anchored in full-strength mainstream lager needed new reasons for relevance beyond the product itself.
VB Tea answered that need not by pivoting the brand but by exploiting a cultural window. The 2019 Ashes series created a genuine behavioural tension for Australian supporters: following live cricket from England meant broken sleep and unconventional viewing hours, and beer was not always the right companion for a 2 a.m. alarm. Clemenger BBDO identified tea as the enemy-turned-ally, a product coded as quintessentially English that could be repatriated and given Australian credentials through the Victoria Bitter name and its Super Pride Hops. Against competitors such as Carlton Draught and XXXX Gold, which relied on broadcast sponsorship and volume-led promotions, VB Tea offered a shareable, story-driven product that earned coverage without requiring traditional media spend.
Evan Roberts served as Executive Creative Director at Clemenger BBDO Australia on the VB Tea campaign, as documented in reporting by Mumbrella. His involvement placed the work within a creative leadership structure that had previously guided Victoria Bitter's brand voice through campaigns including the 2016 Knock-Off series, which targeted the three to six p.m. window with out-of-home, radio, and cricket integrations designed to reconnect the brand with its core audience of hardworking Australian men.
The creative execution for VB Tea rested on a single film advertisement, the campaign's one documented media asset. The film's logic followed a classic comic inversion: tea, an English staple, was reframed as a problem to be solved rather than a comfort to be enjoyed, and VB Tea was presented as the irreverent Australian answer. The hop infusion gave the product a plausible functional story while the packaging design — pyramid tea bags in a branded box — gave it enough visual distinctiveness to travel well in social sharing contexts without requiring a large paid-media footprint.
Chris Maxwell, Marketing Director at Victoria Bitter, articulated the strategic and creative intent with clarity. As quoted by Happymag.tv, Maxwell stated: "We know how much Australians love cricket, and the long hours and sleepless nights they put themselves through whenever there's a series in the UK." He added, per the same source, "So, we wanted to reward their hard work in supporting Australia by creating the perfect alternative to English Breakfast to sip on, as we go to battle with the Poms in what's sure to be a hard-fought series." The tone of those remarks is the tone of the campaign: warm, self-aware, and rooted in the specific texture of Australian sports culture. Production credits beyond Evan Roberts' creative director role are not publicly documented at a granular level across available sources.
No verified performance data for VB Tea is publicly available in terms of sales volume, website traffic, or earned-media reach figures. Trade press coverage was limited: Branding in Asia published a listing on 30 July 2019 titled Victoria Bitter Launches Campaign for Limited Edition VB Tea, and the campaign received documentation on Ads of the World and Clapboard.com. No awards entries or results are publicly documented for this campaign.
VB Tea holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that executes its cultural premise competently without achieving the structural scale or measurable impact that would push it into the top tier. The score reflects genuine creative strengths: the product-as-campaign mechanic is economical and self-reinforcing, the cultural timing around the Ashes is precise, and the brand voice is consistent with Victoria Bitter's established positioning in the Australian market. What the campaign does not demonstrate is evidence of amplification beyond its initial earned-media moment. A single film asset, direct-to-consumer availability capped by limited stock, and a price point of A$10 per box combined to make VB Tea a clever limited edition rather than a platform with longevity.
Structurally, the campaign is most effective as a brand health tool. In a category where mainstream beer volumes in Australia faced contraction, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, VB Tea gave the brand a culturally credible reason to appear in conversations that beer alone could not access. That is a meaningful function, even if its commercial ceiling was low by design.
Victoria Bitter launched VB Tea in July 2019 in Australia. The product was a limited-edition black tea infused with Victoria Bitter Super Pride Hops, sold as pyramid tea bags in boxes of 24 at A$10 per box. It was created by Clemenger BBDO and timed to coincide with the 2019 Ashes cricket series.
Clemenger BBDO Australia created the VB Tea campaign for Victoria Bitter. Evan Roberts served as Executive Creative Director on the campaign, as reported by Mumbrella. The agency had previously worked with Victoria Bitter on the 2016 Knock-Off campaign, which also targeted the brand's core Australian sports audience using cricket integrations.
VB Tea was sold exclusively through the Victoria Bitter website in Australia via direct online sales. Availability was limited and subject to a while-stocks-last condition. The product was priced at A$10 per box of 24 pyramid tea bags, excluding delivery costs, as documented on Ads of the World and Clapboard.com.
Victoria Bitter launched VB Tea to address the late-night and early-morning viewing hours Australian cricket fans endure when England hosts the Ashes. Marketing Director Chris Maxwell, as quoted by Happymag.tv, described it as a reward for supporters watching through sleepless nights, positioning the hop-infused tea as a culturally loaded alternative to English Breakfast.
VB Tea received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects strong cultural timing and a consistent brand voice for Victoria Bitter, but is constrained by limited media scale and a single film asset. The campaign functioned effectively as a brand health moment rather than a commercially scalable platform in the Australian market.
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