Brito: Consumers “not too worried” about ownership change
Anheuser-Busch has filed a transcript of a conference call with distributors, and one of the more interesting questions comes from a Florida wholesaler who says he’s “very, very worried” about a backlash from people who think Anheuser-Busch “will not be an American brand anymore.”
August A. Busch IV responds that a possible backlash is “something we have to be very, very mindful of,” and that marketing VP Dave Peacock “will make sure we have the right types of emssages out there.” Busch adds:
There are very few, if you will, local just American options. We are still an American company. We will be brewed in America. We will make sure that the consumer knows about that ….
InBev CEO Carlos Brito then answers the question at greater length. He discusses consumer polls and ad panels that are done weekly, both in St. Louis and around the country:
What we saw in St. Louis there was — there were a lot of consumers saying they could change their purchasing habits depending on the outcome. In the rest of the U.S., what we saw was that people tend to be more pragmatic. They want to know what they are buying, (whether) the beer will change. If that will not change, that research shows us that they will not change their buying behavior because of a change in ownership. What they told us also is that in a way, some of them, at least for the majority in the rest of the U.S., they said we are not too worried about it.
(Note: The parenthetical “whether” isn’t in the transcript. I added it so the sentence would make sense.)
Brito also described how a competitor tried to use the patriotic issue against InBev in Argentina:
We acquired a company that had a 70 market share in Argentina … And it was everything about the national Argentine values, even the colors of the brand was the colors of their national flag, they posted everything that had to do with the pride of the country. Our competitors, for many months, that was in 2002, would put ads on TV, prime-time, showing the Argentinean flag, the bottle and then that flag fading and the Brazilian flag coming on top of it and saying that this company is not an Argentine company anymore. And I don’t know if you know that but Brazilians and Argentines really don’t get along well at all. … We thought that could generate something. Today six years later it is growing, it is the market leader of the country; it continues to sponsor the same things so in a way consumers realize that what matters didn’t change.
(6 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
Brito may be right. But I know one thing, I won’t buy anymore A-B Inbev products EVER. By the way, I live in Florida. Call it what you want but if you threaten to take a company to court to change board of directors, that’s hostile. Before this I never bought anything but AB. Not again.