Carlton & United Breweries’ CEO has announced he’s quitting the company after its top-selling Great Northern Beer was hit by a furious backlash over a promotional campaign.
Danny Celoni, chief executive of CUB’s business division since 2022, revealed he is leaving the brewer – now owned by Japanese giant Asahi – to pursue new opportunities.
The announcement comes after drinkers vowed to boycott CUB’s Great Northern beer – ‘s biggest-selling brand – in a bizarre row over the funding of new national parks.
The brewer, which aims its ads at outdoor enthusiasts, started the campaign to raise money to support the new parks on January 15 and planned to run it until March 31.
Great Northern had vowed to match any donation up to $200,000 when customers gave to the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife.
But the company abandoned the campaign after activist drinkers vowed to boycott it, claiming more national parks would limit access for 4WD vehicles to remote spots.
On Monday, Asahi – the Japanese giant behind Great Northern – announced Mr Celoni had decided to leave the business, but dismissed any link to the current protest campaign.
It said his departure had been planned prior to the parks campaign launch and came as a result of a management restructure within the brewery.
‘Danny decided to leave the business late last year, following our decision to reorganise Asahi’s n and NZ business,’ an Asahi spokesman told Daily Mail .
‘This was well before the Outdoors for a Cause national parks donation campaign which we terminated last week.
‘Danny is not leaving because of Great Northern’s abandoned Outdoors for a Cause campaign.
‘As you can appreciate, a significant business reorganisation across two countries, and involving many people, requires several months of careful planning before it is announced.
‘Danny decided to leave the business late last year and will continue with the business until the end of June, playing an important role in ensuring the transition process runs smoothly.’
Under the company restructuring, Nigel Parsons will take the title of chief commercial officer, starting on April 1.
‘This is a new role at Asahi Beverages, with the Chief Commercial Officer to have responsibility for the group’s commercial and sales functions across and New Zealand, covering alcohol and non-alcohol,’ the company added.
The backlash against Great Northern is understood to have blindsided Asahi sales executives.
The move to back national parks incensed nature enthusiasts as national parks are more restrictive than state parks and make it harder to camp and bring a family dog.
Christopher Baker from the All Terrain Action Group said more national parks and less state forests was a bad idea.
‘State forests provide unique conservation for natural heritage and recreational needs of the community,’ he said.
‘Converting state forests to national parks will undermine these tailored efforts and erode the local identity and connection to the land.’
Four-wheel driving Facebook group 4WD TV led the opposition with an online social media campaign branding the beer ‘woke’ for backing national parks.
‘In an absolutely disgraceful move Great Northern Brewing has gone woke with a campaign to help get us locked out of forests,’ it wrote.
Leonie Blackwell, who runs the Facebook page ‘Victorians against the Great Forest National Park’, told Daily Mail Great Northern would regret the decision.
‘It’s really disappointing that major companies like that are blindly buying into supporting issues without really understanding the full context of the impact they will have,’ she said.
Angry drinkers quickly bombarded social media with images of them dumping cans of Great Northern.
Billy Menhennet said he would not drink Great Northern again and proceeded to crush cans of the beer with his foot.
‘What the bloody hell is Great Northern thinking, backing up the idea of locking up the bush. It’s only going to cause more fuel for bigger fires,’ he said.
Professor Gary Mortimer, a consumer behaviour expert at the Queensland University of Technology, said it was ‘a case of damned if you do, or damned if you don’t’.
‘Whenever a business makes a decision to support a cause, there will always be an alternative group that don’t support the cause and feel that the money can be allocated elsewhere,’ he told Daily Mail .
‘That’s what happened here.’
Prof Mortimer said promotions for Great Northern ‘tend to be blokes, four-wheel drives, beaches, camping, national parks’.
‘But you can’t run four-wheel drives through them, you can’t bring dogs into them and camping is more challenging.
‘So essentially, their target audience, which likes four-wheel drives and dogs, likes to go camping and fishing, were resistant to raising funds for a national park, which is fundamentally not something they would generally use.’
The Great Northern blunder comes just months after Asahi worried drinkers with its new branding, which places the Japanese brewer over the Carlton & United Breweries logo.