{"id":2170,"date":"2014-11-25T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=2170"},"modified":"2014-11-25T16:35:39","modified_gmt":"2014-11-25T21:35:39","slug":"hell-i-dont-live-in-texas-i-live-in-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=2170","title":{"rendered":"Hell, I don’t live in Texas. I live in Austin!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lone<\/a>The Brewers Association recently\u00a0published the current numbers of breweries in the US.\u00a0 There are 1,308 brewpubs, 1,721 micros, 124 regional breweries, and 25 large breweries in America.\u00a0 These numbers are amazing, but what is really astonishing is that there are 1,968 breweries in the planning stages!\u00a0 And the beer industry is flat?<\/p>\n

The challenge for\u00a0these breweries that are not brewpubs, which offer food, is how does one set oneself apart from all the other brands?\u00a0 As an example, there are close to 1,000 IPAs now being offered!\u00a0 Assuming that the quality of the beer is excellent, it follows that the level of success of any brewery or brand is directly related to the creativity of the marketing.<\/p>\n

In every panel discussion or speech at an industry event discussing crafts, the topic of relevancy in the home market is key.\u00a0 Almost every single industry expert agrees that a brewer must have a flagship brand that has legs and the support of the local market.\u00a0 Without that support, there is little hope for success.<\/p>\n

The book The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock<\/em>, by Jan Reid, published in 1974, chronicles the beginnings of the live music scene in Austin in the early 1970s.\u00a0 This genre of country music was led by Willie Nelson and many others.<\/p>\n

Lone Star Beer, which had been in decline for a number of years, saw an opportunity during this music revolution.\u00a0 The roots of the movement were in Austin, and with the Vietnam War still waging, spoke of what was relevant to the young college students at the University of Texas.\u00a0 Many of the songs sung and written were about Texas and Lone Star Beer.\u00a0 These singers and song writers spoke to the national pride of the state.\u00a0 This hit a nerve.<\/p>\n

The Lone Star District Manager, Jerry Retzloff, saw an opportunity and presented it to the brewery.\u00a0 Barry Sullivan, the VP of Marketing for Lone Star, also realized the possibilities, and the two of them began to capitalize on this music scene.\u00a0 They worked with Willie Nelson and other singer\/songwriters who jumped on board to help promote Lone Star.<\/p>\n

The music spoke of Lone Star Longnecks, or as we know, 12 ounce returnable bottles, became the package of the movement.\u00a0\u00a0As\u00a0the District Manager of DFW, Jerry\u00a0and I met in San Antonio\u00a0when the brewery changed the neck label on the bottle\u00a0to “Lone Neck.”\u00a0 The original Longneck label is pictured above.\u00a0 The neck label in the picture is taped on as it is the actual prototype of the first Lone Star Longneck bottle.\u00a0 It\u00a0is from\u00a01973.<\/p>\n

Lone Star\u2019s jump into this scene turned sales around for the brewery.\u00a0 Soon the brewery started to produce longnecks in six-pack carriers and the sales trends moved to Houston and DFW.\u00a0 In Dallas in 1972, Lone Star was selling only 17 kegs a month. Fast forward to 1973, and Dallas was selling 1,700 kegs a month. The sales increase was a result of the music revolution in the state, not the work of the distributor who was a wine and spirit house.<\/p>\n

Crafts could learn from how Lone Star became a cult beer tied to a regional movement.\u00a0 Unfortunately, for Lone Star, the owner sold out to Olympia in the late 1970s. Oly continued this model; however, they too, sold out to Heileman in the early 1980s.\u00a0 Heileman stopped their involvement shortly after the movement reached its peak with the movie Urban Cowboy<\/em> starring John Travolta.<\/p>\n

Whether the music helped make Lone Star, or Lone Star helped make the music, what this marketing did was to tie Lone Star\u2019s 10+ years of growth to a generation of young drinkers.<\/p>\n

Shiner Bock now is considered more of the beer of Texas, but Lone Star, behind the support of current label owner, Pabst, has been making more of an investment and seeing some increases in sales.\u00a0 You will find the detailed story of Lone Star in the link below to the Texas Monthly Magazine<\/em>.\u00a0 Lone Star, like Schlitz, died when sold\u00a0to new owners\u00a0who chose to go in a different direction.\u00a0 As the singer and writer Jerry Jeff Walker once said, “Hell, I don’t live in Texas.\u00a0 I live in Austin.”<\/p>\n

Beer Fodder;<\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.texasmonthly.com\/<\/span>story\/slideshow-of-lone-star-memorabilia?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Eat%20Like%20a%20Texan&utm_campaign=ELAT%20%2B%20Horizon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The Brewers Association recently\u00a0published the current numbers of breweries in the US.\u00a0 There are 1,308 brewpubs, 1,721 micros, 124 regional breweries, and 25 large breweries in America.\u00a0 These numbers are amazing, but what is really astonishing is that there are 1,968 breweries in the planning stages!\u00a0 And the beer industry is flat? The challenge for\u00a0these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-z0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2170"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2210,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170\/revisions\/2210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}