Beer industry down over Fourth of July and stays flat this year. Could it be the advertising?
The beer industry is struggling. We get that. The current economic situation testing the theory that beer is “recession-resistant,” as we have been told numerous times.
In a spot of good news, the Washington-based Beer Institute released numbers showing that beer shipments from U.S. brewers were up 0.9 percent in June compared to the same month a year ago. But beer companies shouldn’t get too excited about that growth, because beer shipments are down 0.6 percent through the first six months of the year, according to Stifel Nicolaus.
Also, as Lager Heads has reported, the Fourth of July was disappointing for the beer industry. Maybe it’s the economy. Information Resources Inc.’s data show a 7 percent drop in beer sales in convenience stores over the key holiday period. Ouch!
“The July Fourth holiday is when the fireworks go off for beer marketers, but this year it proved a distinctly damp squib,” writes Jeremy Mullman in Advertising Age. Mullman called the sales declines - 5.5 percent down for Anheuser-Busch, and 3.3 percent down at MillerCoors - “gruesome.”
Could it be because of sub-par advertising? Mullman traces the “flurry of new and improved ad pushes for the country’s leading brews,” and finds them wanting. From the story:
While the economy is clearly dragging on the biggest beer brands, the severity of the declines also raises questions about the effectiveness of some of the category’s biggest ad budgets. The decline at Bud Light comes as the brand is nine months into its “Drinkability” effort, designed to give the beer a more product-attribute-fueled push than its former frat-humor efforts did.
A-B said before the summer started that Budweiser’s platform needed a more emotional appeal, and even ask [ad agency] DDB to study vintage ads from now-defunct D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles. But that effort has yet to bear any fruit.
Miller Lite has tried to pound its “Great Taste” to sales gains in the same manner its new stable mate Coors Light succeeded with a single-minded focus on “Rocky Mountain cold refreshment.” But that effort, too, has yet to gain traction.
An interesting round-up. But in better times, would these advertising campaigns be as under the microscope as they are now? We suspect the economy, and not beer advertising, is the 800-lb. (no, 900-lb.) gorilla in the room.
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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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 will use the same tactics in describing my relationship to the bad beer sales as Obama uses when explaining the bad unemployment numbers: “If it weren’t for my efforts, things would be even worse”!
Boobird is to reality as tree is to rock.
I still wonder if the fact that the 4th fell on a Saturday had something to do with it, a lot of people did not have a three day weekend. I didn’t a thus bought less beer.
ABI’s advertising stinks. Drinkability … yawn. Get back to fun and funny. Lizards with Jersey accents … frogs croaking in harmony … Spuds … Whassup … I Love You Man … Yes I am. The formula is there, so use it. How about teaming Frankie and Louie up with a Brazilian monitor lizard named Brito. Self deprecating humor might be the ticket.
Bring back the frogs and spuds mackenzie! Those ads always made me want to have a cold beer….when I was 12.
The advertising is lame, among all three of them. Drinkability? BS. Water and Kool Aid are drinkable, too. Coors feels it’s customers are so dumb, that they can not distinguish a cold beer from a warm beer, so they put color changing mountains on their cans to let people know when it’s cold. Miller, and it’s Triple Hopped campaign is an absolute joke. Any half respectable beer brewer puts the hops in at multiple points in the brewing process. They certainly didn’t invent triple hopped brewing. I just brewed a batch of beer last night, I put hops at three different times during the boil. I’ll also dry hop after it’s done fermenting. I guess I just invented Quadrupel Hopped beer.
AB, Coors, and Miller could probably cut advertising in half at this point and it wouldn’t affect their sales one way or another. Most people drink one lousy beer their entire life, and it’s the same one their dad or buddies drink. No commercial is going to change their lemming ways. Especially not commercials that promote their beer by disparaging other beers.
Let’s also remember that the 4th was rainy wet and miserable throughout a large part of the country. Not too many folks venturing out to celebrate.
I didn’t even drink beer on the 4th because I went to the church parking lot to watch the fireworks in the rain. But hey, it was free and close to home and I didn’t have to risk my childrens’ lives by drinking over-priced beer down at the fair and then driving in the rain.