Scottish Courage is pumping £19m into John Smith's Bitter this year in the hope of making it one of the top three beer brands in the UK. The megaspend ­ 60% up on last year's £12m budget ­ includes pack changes for both Extra Smooth and JS Bitter, new TV ads and a promotion linked to Euro 2000. In addition, Guinness technology is being introduced to replace the static widget used in cans of Extra Smooth for a round floating one. John Smith's is already the country's leading ale and the fifth biggest beer brand. It is worth £700m a year and has doubled volume since 1993. Last year, volumes of JS Bitter grew 6.5% in a market down 4.4%. Extra Smooth was up 39.4% in a sector growing 3.9%. And the brand had 17% of on-trade and 12% of take home sales in 1999 [AC Nielsen]. Marketing director Brian Sharp said: "When Courage and S&N came together five years ago, John Smith's was the number two ale. "The growth has been brought about by the focus on S&N's on trade, growth in the free trade, a distribution push in take home and advertising at a time the market was in decline. "John Smith's has been poorly distributed in independents so we have been filling in gaps. Extra Smooth's sales have benefited from bigger packs." The initial high price of the draught in can bitters has been going down. Sharp agreed there had been a restaging' on price and said Extra Smooth's price had fallen in line with the market. "We want to put ale back on the map by reinvigorating it. We want it to behave more like a lager and be more attractive to young drinkers." The new advertising features more versions of the No Nonsense Man campaign which will go on air from June. The football promotion is called Spot the Bob. There will be 2,000 green football floating widgets in promotional cans. There are five top prizes of £5,000 football holidays. {{DRINKS }}

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