AP Photo/Anheuser-Busch Inc.

In March, Anheuser-Busch will launch new cans and bottles dominated by a vibrant blue, pulling away from a blue and red combination. The new packaging also includes an image of a splash on the side, like a wave, and words pitching Bud Light’s refreshment and drinkability.
— The Associated Press, Dec. 11, 2008

Literature fanbase, are you tired of reading ordinary newspaper columns? Why not try our new column, with superior readability?

Ordinary columns go down harsh. Our new column goes down smooth, with no bitter aftertaste. That’s what we call readability, a concept pioneered by our German wordmeisters.

They came to this country with but one thing on their minds: producing a newspaper column that would have superior readability. What’s that mean? Simply put, it means we don’t string words together like the Germans do, like schicklegruberhofmeistergesselschaft (literally, the “guy with the razor who grubs in the barn company”). No, we use short words. English words. Easily digestible words.

Readable words.

Our new column produces a taste, a smoothness, a readability you will find in no other column in this newspaper at any price, particularly not in Eric Mink’s.

We know: You thought you already knew what readability was. You thought it meant something you didn’t have to hack your way through with a machete, like Bill Clinton’s memoirs or, say, the fine print in the MySpace terms of use. How wrong you were.

There’s lots more to readability than something that is readable, just as there’s a lot more to drinkability than something you can pour down your throat without gagging. Those Bud Light marketing guys proved you wrong, didn’t they?

For years beer’s fanbase has been peeling the label off bottles of Budweiser and reading how beechwood aging produces drinkability. Then, last fall, the Bud Light marketing wizards take this word, ‘‘drinkability,’’ and build a $50 million advertising campaign around it. Next thing you know, outfielders in the World Series are crashing against “Drinkability” writ large on outfield fences.

“Drinkable,” mind you, doesn’t mean “potable.” You don’t want a commercial with a guy crawling through Death Valley, coming upon a water hole covered with slimy green algae, and saying, “I hope the water’s drinkable.”

No, you want people hanging around a swimming pool, explaining — to very attractive but apparently very stupid people — that drinkability is, in fact, a real concept. You tell them their beer is drinkable and suddenly, you’re selling way more Bud Light and, by implication, consumers begin thinking that somehow Miller Lite tastes like Drano.

The campaign is such a smashing success that the brewery’s decided to take it $48 million further, going so far as to change the color of the beer cans to blue. Why? Because expensive marketing studies indicate that the color blue suggests “refreshment.”

You read this, and but a single thought should pop into your mind: Where can I get a job getting paid thousands of dollars to tell people that blue equals refreshment?

That’s how we marketing wizards work, fanbase. We plant the idea and watch it grow.

That’s why we’re not only in the readability business, but also in the business of growing ideas. It used to be that the only things you could grow were old, vegetables and certain kinds of mold.

Then, overnight, people were “growing” the business. ”Growing” the economy. “Growing” the fanbase.

That’s right, fanbase. You used to be merely fans. Sportswriters would say, “The Cardinals have great fans.” Then one day, they started saying, “The Cardinals have a great fanbase.”

Gussie Busch used to say, “Let’s win one more pennant for those great fans of St. Louis.” Now he would say, “Let’s win one more pennant for that great fanbase of St. Louis. Also they should drink more Bud Light because it’s drinkable.”

Movie stars used to have fan clubs. Now they have fanbases. I learned this by logging onto viggofanbase.com, home of “the fun of all things Viggo,” Viggo being Viggo Mortensen, the famous mumbling actor with the dimpled chin. Viggo has watchability. And maybe actability.

This is our promise, fanbase: If you read this column, with its superior readability, and drink Bud Light, with its superior drinkability, soon you will notice that your car has superior driveability and your naps have superior snoozability. Your food will be have delicious edibility. Nothing will be unthinkable because your brain will have superior thinkability.

The things you see will have heightened visibility, particularly things that are blue, and you will find that refreshing.

And, if you are very very loyal, someday we will explain to you the concept of “branding.”