The end of “dumbed-down” beer advertising?
Paul Chibe, the recently appointed (Anheuser-Busch) CMO, has his hands full. He’s inherited once great U.S. brands that are in severe erosion and he’s determined to confront what he sees as the "dumbing down" of the entire category’s advertising, as he told me last week. The kind of advertising (see also Miller Lite’s "Man Up" campaign, et al) has contributed to the category’s loss of volume to wine and spirits, hence Bud Light Platinum — "a premium proposition" designed to "appeal to young-adult drinkers who’ve moved to hard liquor," as Chibe describes it.
More here >> Advertising Age.
Dear Paul,
It’s not the advertising that is killing your brands, it’s the taste.
-Adam
Typical that he thinks younger (and all drinkers) are moving to wine and liquor over macro swill. He can’t acknowledge that craft beer has a huge impact or else he’d be out of a job and they’d be hiring someone to re-formulate their beer recipes.
Yes, please pump more into advertising and forget about the fact that it could be your product. Im ok with it though, slow and painful death.
Bud Light Platinum is not going to save you.
I’d like to think that, eventually, the big brewers will HAVE to make bigger, better beers and hopefully alleviate the supply burden we are seeing with all the small craft breweries. Maybe if the big boys changed their focus and made real beer, really good beer, then we all wouldn’t be fighting over 1,100 bottles of Black Note, limited case supply of Hopslam, scarce availability of CBS and King Henry, etc. Just a thought.
He doesn’t consider the Bud Light Platinum ads “dumbed-down”? Might be time for him to re-evaluate his definition of “dumbed-down”.
The big beer companies will never change their tune as far as selling adjunct light lagers. Too little profit margin on those beers if you’re actually using real barley instead of rice and corn. Im glad to see people are starting to wise up and drink beer with real taste instead of beer with advertised taste.
It’s funny, because the brewers at BMC/ABInBev are pretty amazingly talented guys. And their budgets are out of this world.
If they wanted to, they could easily make some of the best craft beer on the planet, and distribute it to every corner of the world.
After reading the whole article, craft beer is hardly mentioned. They still won’t face facts: people who prefer quality over quantity will always go for craft beer. Also, people who want truly cheap beer will go with the Beast, Stones, or any number of Pabst brands, especially now that Will Ferrell is hawking Old Milwaukee (for free, at that). They would sell more Bud if they dropped the price on it, but that would be tantamount to admitting it’s an inferior product. Their downward spiral will continue and we’ll keep hearing about payola tap lines and attempts to introduce legislation that hampers craft beer and homebrewers.
J, I’m with you man. It seems that arrogance, not advertising, is what’s keeping these guys out of the game.
Perhaps they could stop brand erosion if they simply released some craft brews under the mainstream brand. They have the talent and the money to do it. Budweiser Winter Bourbon Ale might bring some of the craft segment back to the mainstream. Look at how well Blue Moon is doing for Coors!
Or they could simply ignore this and continue to lose market share. It’s 6 one way, a half-dozen, the other for me.
I’ve been saying for 20 years, even sending letters and e-mails to AB, telling them that what they need to do is go back to the pre-prohibition recipes of Budweiser and Michelob. Always hear crickets. Screw ’em, let them fail.
wxman, from a marketing standpoint (“hey, it’s the old recipe, not the shit we’ve been making for the last 90 years”) or as a matter that he old recipe tastes better (even August Busch wouldn’t touch it)?