Cast your mind back to 1952….
No?
Well in those days brewers like Marston’s used to name their beers after simple branding on the casks to denote the different strengths. Marks such as P, PX, PXX and PXXX.
Apart from sounding like the sizes in a range of T-shirts, they didn’t really make a great bar call did they? “Barman, I’ll have a pint of P.”
So George Peard, the hero of this story and the head brewer, turned out to be the branding guru of his time when he came up with a proper brand name for his most popular beer – a lip smacking 4.5% abv pale ale quaffed in great volumes by East Midlanders since 1834.
He ran a competition amongst brewery workers to come up with the best one and lovely Marjorie Newbold from the typing pool, came up with a zinger!
Marston’s Pedigree was born and the rest is history.
Hats off to you Georgie-boy – that’s why you’re on the bottles and the bar.
