Could trading conditions for pubs get any worse? Earlier this month, the British Beer & Pub Association released another set of statistics that makes depressing reading for the industry.
The on-trade sold 104m fewer pints between July and September this year than in the same quarter in 2007 - the biggest third-quarter fall in a decade. It amounts to a drop of 1.1m pints a day, according to the British Beer & Pub Association UK's Quarterly Beer Barometer.
Duty hikes, the smoking ban and aggressive promotion from super-markets using alcohol as a loss-leader are some of the problems piling up for the pubs. This has been compounded by people going out less in the face of recession, sending the sector into freefall. Five to six pubs are closing each day, and the on-trade is on the point of being eclipsed by beer sales in super-markets and off-licences.
Against this bleak backdrop, brewers' marketing departments are contemplating where to go next. The big four - Carlsberg, Coors, InBev and Scottish & Newcastle - all have long-term distribution agreements with pub companies, so acting on the downward sales trend is a pressing issue.
Carlsberg has started a consultation among its marketing team in response to the decline of the sector. This follows a quarterly trading statement that showed the UK business was the only one in Western Europe to post a year-on-year sales decline in organic beer.
Later this month, Carlsberg will unveil an initiative to boost on-trade sales. It is keeping the details under wraps, but head of sponsorship Gareth Roberts says the work is intended to 'make us more effective and able to face the challenges in the on-trade'.
Drinks producers' ads are changing in response to the softening in the on-trade. Strong-bow's summer campaign abandoned its traditional pub setting for a rooftop garden, while Carlsberg invested a substantial portion of adspend on barbecue activity this year.
Placing emphasis on food is one possible on-trade tactic. Scottish & Newcastle's direct and digital campaign for Kronenbourg 1664, for example, positions the lager as a drink to be enjoyed with a meal.
Nick Francis, commercial director of the pub and restaurant business Tatters-hall Castle Group, says investment in NPD may also help. 'A little bit of something new is always beneficial, but at the moment brand owners are a bit reluctant - it is not cheap to launch a product, and it can be risky.'
Another approach to the downturn is to weight spend toward incentivising bar staff, rather than focusing on consumer-facing activity.
Francis supports this, but adds that it is vital to pub-owners that drinks brands invest in advertising. He says he has replaced Diageo's Smirnoff with Russian Standard vodka in all the Tattershall pubs, because the latter is new and investing in above-the-line activity.
Aside from what brewers are able to do, others argue pubs need to reinvent themselves as a 'third spaces' - a position currently dominated by Starbucks.
Graham Abbott, director of drinks marketing agency Box Marketing, argues that, with the roll-out of the smoking ban, pubs 'missed a massive opportunity' to morph into places that could have different functions at different times of the day. For example, he suggests, pubs could be transformed into something akin to a play centre during the day, to attract families.
Whether pubs can be recast in this mould is debatable, but the rapid decline of the trade means that drinks producers, pub companies and the rest of the industry will need to embrace fresh ideas to address the challenges of selling in a severely slimmed-down sector in the years to come.