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“Pabst Blue Ribbon is a recession juggernaut, but not just because it’s cheap,” Advertising Age scribe Jeremy Mullman reports.

PBR sales are up an “astounding” 25 percent this year, Mullman writes, quoting data from Information Resources Inc. From the story:

While cheaper beers - a group within which PBR has long been something of a mascot - are outperforming their more expensive peers as consumers look for low-cost options these days, there’s clearly more than pricing at work here.

For starters, PBR isn’t that cheap any more. The brand hiked prices this year, and a case of PBR now costs $1.50 more than MillerCoors‘ Keystone, $1 more than Anheuser-Busch’s Busch and Natural brands, and 50 cents more than Miller High Life.

PBR is growing at a faster clip than all of the aforementioned brands, despite the higher price. As Mullman points out, the reason can’t be media spending, because PBR didn’t register any measured media spending during the first half of 2009, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

That’s a clear contrast from other cheaper brews, which increased spending to get in front of drinkers seeking cheaper options. Natural Light, for instance, spent $1.4 million on measured media in the first half, up from only $350,000 a year earlier. And Miller High Life spent about $4.7 million during the first half of 2009, compared to $4.5 million a year earlier. Those brands are substantially bigger than PBR.

So, if PBR costs more and advertises less, why is it up so much more than its competitors? From the story:

The answer, wholesalers and beer-marketing experts said, is likely found in marketing activity that occurred long before the current recession. Back in 2004, Pabst executed a highly effective word-of-mouth campaign that made the long-declining brand an “ironic downscale chic” choice for bike messengers and other younger drinkers who viewed the beer as a statement of non-mainstream taste. PBR sales surged by nearly 17 percent that year, and have climbed at single-digit rates since, until this year, when the recession sent its sales soaring as more drinkers were pushed into the subpremium category.

Think of it as conspicuous downscale consumption, or something like it.

“There’s still a bit of hipness to it,” said Benj Steinman, editor of Beer Marketer’s Insights. “Of all the subpremiums, it’s got a little more cache.”

“It’s an anti-establishment badge,” added a major market wholesaler. “It seems to play to the retro, nonconformist crowd pretty well.”

That’s fascinating, and the stuff of a marketing case study: How a brewer can convince drinkers that they can be both cheap and cool. Impressive stuff from Pabst.