Beer marketing? Drinkability? Yawn, says Philly beer columnist
Joe Sixpack, the Philadelphia Daily News‘ decorated beer writer, is disappointed. Disappointed, that is, in beer advertising these days. The Coors Light fake press conferences? Insipid, he says. But in a recent column, Joesaved most of his ire for the new “drinkability” campaign for Bud Light, Anheuser-Busch’s bestselling beer.
Recall that the company paid quite a bit in recent months to market Bud Light — roughly $48 million in media spending in the last three months of 2008, by our count — and that the “drinkability” theme was a major part of that. As A-B chief creative officer Bob Lachky put it recently, “we’ve done some heavy lifting over six months to explain our product point of difference.”
Well, Joe Sixpack (the columnist, not the proverbial regular citizen) is not buying it. From his story:
In the history of advertising, has there ever been a more inconsequential description of a product? Anheuser-Busch has spent a reported $50 million to propound the less-than-reassuring assertion that the leading quality of Bud Light is that you can swallow it without doing any serious damage to your digestive system.
I’ll stipulate, if it moves things along.
Otherwise, in Joe Sixpack’s 7th Annual State of the Sleaze, I’m left to wonder: Have beer companies run out of things to say?
The 2008-09 beer commercial season, which closes this weekend with Super Bowl XLIII, was entirely unmemorable. No catchphrases, no talking animals, no Man Laws. … In brewing circles, “drinkability” is a measure of the ease of consumption. And what, you may ask, makes a beer easy to drink?
A 2004 peer-reviewed paper published by the Master Brewers Association of America said that carbonation and bubble density are among the major factors that increase drinkability. Among the negative factors: aroma, flavor, malt, hops, bitterness and aftertaste.
In other words, the less character, the more drinkable.
One other factor improves drinkability, according to the paper: The rate of gastric emptying. The faster a beer makes you pee, the more you can drink.
Which, frankly, would make for a good commercial.
Instead, we’re left with the Bud Light campaign. At first, the ads seem a clever reach toward eerie irony, as if this most banal of qualities is worthy of network airtime. That’s why, as I watched the fake freeze-frames, I kept waiting for a bigger joke, at least a chuckle.
This is not the first time we’ve heard analysts, writers or colleagues disparage the “drinkability” campaign.
But there is a contrarian view. It’s possible that commercials that aren’t perhaps as funny as traditional Bud Light commercials actually help the company sell more beer, or at least maintain sales. Top A-B marketers have hinted that Bud Light needed to have a firmer reason for people to drink it, beyond the fact that Bud Light commercials were often hilarious. A-B gives grudging respect to Coors Light, which has done extremely well with perhaps an even more basic pitch: the beer is cold.
Our point: Especially in the Age of InBev, perhaps the key metric at One Busch Place will be ka-ching, not chuckles. Sales over laughs. Our sense is that A-B marketers love to make people laugh, AND buy the beer. But if they had to choose — especially with new, cost-slashing managers poking around — they’d take the sales.
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Jeremiah McWilliams is a native Virginian who came to the Post-Dispatch in early 2007 to cover beer and other consumer products. He previously covered manufacturing for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Va. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University. 
I wonder how long it will take before “Drinkability” gets them in trouble with MADD.
Just watched the Miller 1 Second Ads. They made me laugh, which is more than I can say about 30 seconds of Drinkability. Totally boring.
The Drinkability campaign is so weak and full of nothing. I’m amazed AB spent so much on that sorry excuse for an ad anchor. Just makes me wonder what’s going on over at Waylon. I know Swain is a master, but obviously he doesn’t have a good team.
Sounds to me as though AB needs to go back and find the guys who put together some of the great campaigns of all time. Look to the teams who produced hit after hit at D’Arcy (namely McAnallen and folks) to bring some magic back to a stale product like Bud Light.
For a watered down beer, Bud Light needs more sizzle in it’s ads. When I look to buy beer and stand in front of the Bud Light window, I quickly bypass it for more ‘interesting’ selections.
Hey Lachey, Hope brito has a kid that needs you to baby sit at corp. events like how you did with IV, because you have missed the boat on creativity and marketing your brand.
another failuar like superbowl should see you and the big Mc… out the door. But than I hear that brito would rather have yes men ( not people.)than honesty . so there u two fit the mold.
This really is laughable and Joe hit the nail on the head. Its drinkable if it has no flavor. I mean really. The sad truth is it works. If you tell someone a saltine cracker is steak long enough they’ll begin to believe it’s true. Let’s face it most Americans are sheep. The reality is this is about the least drinkable, mass produced beer on the market. I’m the guy in St. Louis that told A-B to get out of my yard. I wouldn’t feed their garbage to my worst enemy’s dog!
Drinkability = BS. It’s brilliantly meaningless marketing drivel, which is well suited for the young, hipster, faux-hawked, collar-popped, binge-drinking drones AB covets.
The problem with Bud Light’s weak “Drinkability” ad campaign is it took attention away from the sizzle and put it on the steak. And, let’s face it, watery, weak American lagers don’t have much steak to sell. No wonder Bud Light got so huge by selling commercials saying nothing about the beer except it “Never fills you up; never lets you down”. Of course, that begs the question, “How, exactly, does a light beer let you down?”.
In their previous, wildly successful commercials, they never spoke of “drinkability”, or any other discernible quality; they made the beer, and the pursuit of obtaining one, like the glowing briefcase in “Pulp Fiction”: Nobody knew exactly what it was; only that everyone would go to great lengths to get it. Like The Maltest Falcon, Bud Light in those ads was “the stuff that dreams are made of”…at least until you drink it and discover it’s only a beer.
Case in point: Budweiser’s obsession with Clydesdales. What does a draft horse have to do with the quality or desirability of a brand of beer? Nothing…except it makes you feel good by seeing it. Gilt by association.
What did the old “Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo” ominous penguin at the door have to do with Bud Ice? Penguins=ice? Oh.
When Spuds MacKenzie was “the original party animal”, did it make Bud Light a better beer? No, but it made it the go-to brand for fun. Same with the “Bud-weis-er” frogs and Clydesdales playing football in the Bud Bowl, and on the range. Then, Anheuser-Busch got into the kiddie-hooch business with Spykes….yet A-B, remember, doesn’t market to teens. Riiiiiiight.
BTW, with Miller High Life’s delivery driver; Coors, and Bud commercials, at what point in time did L.A.’s Memorial Coliseum’s parking lots become Ground Zero for all American beer commercials?