Bud (err, "America?") Loses Its Voice?

Sometimes my powers of observation are, well, what's the opposite of incisive? Let's go with comically misguided. Just yesterday I wrote: "AB InBev and MillerCoors are a part of giant international conglomerates, and this fact is well-known among customers. (They used to feature heavily patriotic ads, but have had to back off them for more anodyne spots.)" So what big announcement do we read today?

The company has kept the same can you already know, but when you look closely, you’ll realize that it has swapped out its own name, "Budweiser," for "America." That’s right, Budweiser has renamed its beer America for the summer. "We thought nothing was more iconic than Budweiser and nothing was more iconic than America," says Tosh Hall, creative director at the can’s branding firm JKR.

(That article on Fast Company is a piece of work, and if you're looking for a satisfying hate-read this afternoon, give it a look. Sample sentence: "So Budweiser is going to potentially ingenious, potentially absurd branding extremes.")

Since I have already proved myself to be a fraudulent reader of multinational beer company thinking, I figure this is an ideal time to offer sweeping theories and predictions. I mean, no one's still reading this, right? 

Let's start with the obvious: Budweiser is not an American brand. Problem. The question is: can Bud (the brand) reassociate itself with America despite its Belgo-Brazilian parentage? Or put another way, will actual Americans play along? Going back to the 70s through the 90s, when Bud ascended to become the dominant national brand, it played the patriotism card brilliantly. It created a portfolio of different ads directed at different audiences (nostalgic oldsters, sporties, party bros, blacks and Latinos) that all said "America" a different way. It was a marvel to behold. 

But the brand faces entirely different challenges now. It's not competing against other domestic mass market lagers. It's not competing against other national brands. And it's not competing in an environment in which "beer" has a single meaning. Attempting to brazen out this fraud in 1976 would have been one thing. But doing it in the era of craft, when the two most important values are authenticity and localness? That's a much more hostile battlefield. ABI is practically begging customers to deface their labels with sharpies reading "Brazil."

It also contradicts the thrust of their recent proud-to-be-a-macro/not-backing-down ads. Those have gotten nothing but derisive catcalls from Team Craft, but I think they're brilliant. They're designed to seize back credibility--and authenticity--by owning who and what they are. They basically say, "we're large and in charge, mother[expletive deleted]." And they work because it's true. The "America" campaign, by contrast, is the opposite. It's slick marketing (not quite in the category of Sally's Rule, but close) premised on a lie. The "proud" ads give Bud drinkers ammo to support the brand proudly, in the face of craft. The America ads treat those same customers as chumps, cynically assuming they'll buy beer from a foreign-owned company based on nothing more than cheap patriotism. 

ABI has also thrown a hanging fastball over the center of the plate for Team Craft to send long. "Nothing says America like a multinational corporation based in Leuven!"

I have no idea whether it will work or not. If I had been one of the guys from St. Louis sitting in the board room when this was green-lighted, though, I would have said "no [expletive delete] way." It's a deeply cynical campaign and seems like a great way to damage the brand long term.

Opportunities in Advertising

No matter what you think of Newcastle, this is brilliant:

(Yes, the idea of a Heineken brand mocking an InBev brand's inauthenticity is absurd*, but it's a great ad.)  Craft breweries could take a page from this playbook.

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*And cynical.  From the article: "As the agency puts it, 'Newcastle's heritage, its founder, hometown and brewing process are all fair game. … It's beer advertising without all the bollocks that usually comes with beer advertising.'"  Of course, that's undiluted hogwash: Newcastle isn't even brewed in Newcastle anymore.  And it's largely an export product, and the blue-collar-beer-for-burly-shipbuilders image is pure vamping.

When "Beervana" Got Trademarked

An email this morning reminded me that Rogue had trademarked the words "dare" and "risk" as they apply to barley malts. I see nothing particularly ominous in this--I can't imagine anyone else thinking this would be a good marketing opportunity. Rogue clearly can't trademark the words in their traditional use, so really, it's another stunt to underscore the "Rogue" brand.

But it reminded me of a potentially darker mark that debuted earlier this year--one which may amount to nothing. Have a look:

Word Mark	BEERVANA
Goods and Services	IC 032. US 045 046 048. G & S: Ale; Beer. FIRST USE: 20080901. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20080901
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code	(4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number	77002599
Filing Date	September 19, 2006
Current Filing Basis	1A
Original Filing Basis	1B
Published for Opposition	May 8, 2007
Registration Number	3793428
Registration Date	May 25, 2010
Owner	(REGISTRANT) Comeback Brewing, Inc. CORPORATION TEXAS 141800 San Pedro, Suite 310 San Antonio TEXAS 78232
Attorney of Record	Christopher D. Erickson
Type of Mark	TRADEMARK
Register	PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator	LIVE

You may not recognize "Comeback Brewing," but that refers to Gambrinus-owned BridgePort, who rolled out their "Beervana" ads earlier this year. Texas-based Gambrinus.

Now, a Texas corporation owning the trademark to "Beervana" might raise a few hackles. But of course, it almost HAD to be a non-Oregon company that registered it; no locals would dare (not Dare ™) seize such a sacred and communal appellation. John Harris mentioned it to me earlier this year, with rightful pique--the Texas thing seemed to bother him especially.

Since I've been associated with the word for over a decade, I have a few thoughts, too. Of course, I've had this blog for four years. I also held the domain name a decade ago. Throughout this association, I've been very careful to recognize that the name is firmly in the public domain. When applied to the place of Portland or Oregon, it might as well be the words Portland or Oregon. Beyond using it as a tag in their advertisements, I have no idea what Gambrinus' interest in the word "Beervana" is.

Honestly though? I'm not too worried. BridgePort is mainly sold in the Northwest. The idea of using the word "Beervana" stems from the urge to sell beer. Getting in a huge war with people by trying to limit their fair use of the word "Beervana" will not result in greater sales. And there would be a huge war--one I'd be happy to lead. So I figure, it's interesting but not particularly threatening.

As micros get more and more macro, we're going to run up against these kinds of seizures of the psychic landscape of brewing. It's not a tiny brotherhood anymore; it's big business. Real dollars are at stake. I'm pretty cool with it, but I wonder--will it damage or dull the enthusiasm beer geeks have to the erstwhile mom 'n pop breweries? Your thoughts?

We Drink Pabst to Stick It to the Man

Oh man, I feel a brand dissection coming on:

The resuscitation of Pabst Blue Ribbon offers the best example of how subtle the Don Drapers of today can be. P.B.R. went from a beer known for being cheap and bland and in seeming terminal decline in 2001, to a brand known for being cheap and bland that has increased sales by over 25% since 2008, in spite of raising prices in the middle of a recession. That’s on top of a roughly 60% increase in sales between 2001 and 2006, due to a stealth marketing campaign astutely analyzed by Rob Walker in his book Buying In.

Alex Wipperfürth, who consulted for P.B.R. during those years and has written a book that draws on his findings, describes P.B.R. customers as engaging in “lifestyle as dissent” and “consumption as protest” – embracing this seemingly forlorn beer as a kind of expression of “no future” solidarity. P.B.R. succeeded by willfully keeping its marketing efforts as neutral as possible, to perpetuate the beer’s underdog image.

Buying P. B. R. is not much of a form of dissent, in comparison with, say, marching across the bridge at Selma or smuggling in food to Anne Frank, but it is dissent nevertheless. As Walker observes, buying the P.B.R. beer brand, owned by a large holding company, is hardly a way to strike back against corporations – but it is a way to protest against the phony hilarity and brand saturation of conventional marketing. Incredibly, Pabst marketing whiz Neal Stewart shaped his unconventional campaign by reading Naomi Klein’s 2000 book No Logo. After finishing Klein’s impassioned protest against the pervasiveness of corporate brands, Stewart concluded, "Hey, there are all these people out there who hate marketing – and we should sell to them."

Seriously, I think I'll do a brand dissection on PBR this week--a long overdue treatment. My house is almost done--just a little finish work on those boards in-between window lights--and so blogging depth and quality should pick up a bit. I definitely want to get back to the brand dissections, too.

Expanding the Definition of Beervana

BridgePort has two new videos out (they're called TV spots, but about where they're airing, and when, I can't say) that are very close to each other. Here's the second one--see if you notice anything interesting.



I'm actually pretty cool with an expanded definition of "Beervana." I know it properly refers to just the city of Portland. I'm also cool with that. But if you look at regional culture, the Pacific Northwest constitutes a single zone. Portland and Seattle have far more in common than they have in contrast.

Now, about that video. The visuals are cool and the music is tolerable (though not ideal). The voice-over? Not good. One has the sense that BridgePort's trying to hard--way too hard. Too bad they didn't just trust the images. They tell the whole story on their own. A longer and better version--with two seconds of pretty racy material--is here.

Open Ad Space

Perhaps you've seen the empty ad space to the immediate left of this sentence. That's the sign that my first advertiser's three-month run has ended. If you're at all interested in advertising on this blog, click through and see how easy it is. I run the ads through BlogAds, which has a nice interface that makes it easy to put up the content you wish. It's cheap and you can run an ad for just a week or months--your choice.

If you're interested in seeing my stats, holler, and I'll send them along.

About Blogads

If you look to the left column, you will see a small gray box that says "advertise on this blog." Look down the page and you'll see that Google Ads are gone. I'm trying something new: Blogads. In order to recoup some of my time on this blog, advertising seems like a decent way to go (and Adsense isn't getting it done). Moreover, in about two weeks, the federal grant that has paid my salary for the past five years comes to an end and I join the ranks of the unemployed--and I have to figure a way to avoid resorting to Pabst.

Note to Readers
Like Google's Adsense, Blogads have an important virtue. I won't be selling the space--anyone can go buy a week, and I won't know until it appears. I won't be selling ads and I won't be doing any kind of quid pro quo. You might see a Budweiser ad, for all I know. (I do have the option of rejecting an ad I find inappropriate or offensive.) On the politics side of things, I know that Blogads are often sold to people advertising for the opposite team, so for example, you might see an ad for Sarah Palin's book on a liberal site. This often enrages the readers, but it's actually a very good thing. By removing myself from the ad side, I maintain the same relationship to breweries I've always had. The advertisers (should there be any--and I hope there are!) will be Blogad's clients, not mine.

Note to Potential Advertisers
I do hope you consider advertising on the site. My traffic's not amazing, but I do have a perfectly-targeted audience of beer geeks. Trying to raise your brewery's profile, promoting new releases or events--this is a good site to find eyes interested in that info. I have no idea what a competitive price is, so I'm starting it out at $15 a week, which doesn't seem bad. The price of three pints (or a couple six-packs) is all it will set you back.

That is all.

Coors for the Ladies

Last night, Gillian Edwards left an intriguing comment on my gender preferences post:

I work for an initiative called BitterSweet Partnership in the UK which has been set up to address the fact the UK beer industry has traditionally ignored women (an example being stereotypcial and sexist advertising) Beer shouldn’t be pitched as a masculine drink and it’s great to get other people’s opinions on this.

Sounds good, right? I envisioned a little grassroots effort where women worked to pop the kind of cultural stereotypes I discussed in my post. Pro-beer, pro-women, cool. Sadly, no.

Rather, it's a very highly-produced site owned and operated by the Molson Coors corporation. Using a classic technique, the company is playing to a targeted group with a sympathetic campaign. But while it comes packaged in social-justice wrapping paper, it's just an old-time marketing campaign. Coors has no particular interest in encouraging beer-drinking among women or dispelling long-held stereotypes. They want to encourage women to drink Coors, period.

A couple years ago, Coors launched a Latino-targeted campaign, and with admirable candor, admitted that the goal was to play on emotional sympathies to push product:

"The African American and Hispanic markets together make up nearly one-third of the population in the U.S. and 21 percent of all U.S. males ages 21-34 are Hispanic. While Coors Light's cold refreshment is the same for any consumer, we tailor how we communicate that message to ensure it builds the personality of the brand and connects emotionally with multicultural consumers."

This is no different. It's a company using exactly the same Madison Avenue techniques to appeal to women that it used when it objectified them in ads like the Coors Light twins series. Or the more offensive "Wingman" spots. In politics, this kind of thing is called "astroturf" because it mimics a grassroots campaign. In the commercial sphere, it's just called marketing. Caveat emptor--and for me, no sale.

Coors is not pro-women. It's pro-Coors.