{"id":4881,"date":"2018-07-10T06:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=4881"},"modified":"2018-07-09T09:04:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T14:04:05","slug":"every-great-brand-is-like-a-great-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=4881","title":{"rendered":"Every great brand is like a great story."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Bill Hackett of Constellation Brands has long advocated that the beer industry is all about the brand building which, in his opinion, is lacking from suppliers.\u00a0For decades, the industry has followed the line extensions model as this has been the path of least resistance.<\/p>\n

Light beers were the first line extensions and were by far, the most successful of all with the major selling brands being Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light. \u00a0Budweiser, Coors, and Miller are, of course, still viable selling brands in and of themselves.\u00a0 Bud Light continues to expand on their light extension with additional extensions: Bud Light Platinum, Bud Light Lime, and Bud Light Orange.\u00a0 Only the future will reveal the next extension from Bud Light.<\/p>\n

Years ago, AB tested Michelob Ultra, a line extension from Michelob, and, as they say, the rest is history.\u00a0 That line extension is now THE brand.\u00a0 Ask any AB wholesaler today and they will tell you Michelob Ultra is on fire.\u00a0 While other brands with the same wholesalers are losing ground and struggling, Ultra continues its remarkable growth by staying true to its branding. Ultra, like Bud Light, has its own line extensions: Ultra Lime Cactus, and recently, Pure Gold.\u00a0 Both extensions are growing by feeding off the mother brand.<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, Miller Lite, which was originally dismissed by most breweries as a viable brand, soon hit pay-dirt with consumers.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, both AB and Coors followed Miller\u2019s lead with their respective light beers.\u00a0 Although other breweries produced their own light beers, they had little to no success.\u00a0 The two biggest failures were Schlitz, with at least three light beer efforts, and Pabst.\u00a0 Neither brewery could establish a light brand.\u00a0 The same story was true for the regional beers. No brewery could establish a light challenger.<\/p>\n

In the past year, the industry has seen two challengers to Ultra’s dominance. The first was Amstel X Light, a line extension of Amstel.\u00a0 Soon thereafter Corona Premier followed.\u00a0 Both these extension lines are the produce of major importers. As predicted by this blog, Amstel’s X Light, once a Heineken\u00a0Light offering, would not become a viable brand.\u00a0 X Light is now hanging on for life as many key retailers are discontinuing this SKU during their summer resets.\u00a0 Unless something unexpected is occurs, X Light will become just like its predecessor, Amstel, a brand of the past.<\/p>\n

Corona Premier, a line extension of Corona, targeted directly at Ultra with low carbs and calories, has become a viable new product making the top lists of new products.\u00a0 Corona Premier\u2019s scan numbers continue\u00a0to grow.\u00a0 Constellation Brands and Corona appear to be stepping up to be Ultra’s main competitor.<\/p>\n

Heineken’s\u00a0major mistake was to use Amstel as the line extension instead of using Heineken.\u00a0 Corona Premier has major support behind it, and with its initial success, expect Constellation to step up its spending against the brand.\u00a0 Corona has Corona Light and Corona Premier pitted against Ultra. Heineken, however, has only a somewhat successful Light in Heineken Light.\u00a0 Heineken’s new CEO, an American, has her work cut out for her and it will be interesting to see how she addresses this segment.<\/p>\n

Rest assured that the other majors including MC will soon attack Ultra with their own offering of low carbs.\u00a0 Miller Lite experienced success with their low carb campaign but eliminated that campaign some time ago.\u00a0 The next 18 months will be interesting.<\/p>\n

Every great brand is like a great story\u2026<\/p>\n

Editor’s note:\u00a0 It was reported yesterday that Scott DeMartine of Columbia Distributing passed away recently.\u00a0 I was fortunate to have worked with Scott when he headed up Star Brands.\u00a0 He will be missed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Hackett of Constellation Brands has long advocated that the beer industry is all about the brand building which, in his opinion, is lacking from suppliers.\u00a0For decades, the industry has followed the line extensions model as this has been the path of least resistance. Light beers were the first line extensions and were by far, […]<\/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-1gJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881"}],"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=4881"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4904,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881\/revisions\/4904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}