{"id":654,"date":"2013-03-12T07:30:14","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T12:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=654"},"modified":"2013-03-12T07:30:14","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T12:30:14","slug":"those-who-do-not-remember-the-past-are-condemned-to-repeat-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=654","title":{"rendered":"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BECK'S<\/p>\n

\"Bud<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over the years, I had the opportunity to address a number of college classes on the beer industry.\u00a0 At the beginning, my talks were all about marketing, how marketing was used in the industry and how the industry\u00a0was evolving.\u00a0 Once Philip Morris bought the Miller Brewing Company, and introduced their idea of marketing from their cigarette division, things ramped up dramatically.\u00a0 PM’s aggressive\u00a0approach woke up the 800 pound gorilla, AB, and everything changed. Because of that, the industry became highly visible\u00a0to the world of marketing.<\/p>\n

One of the lessons I taught students and my employees was to visit a large grocery store to learn about the packaging of the number one selling products.\u00a0 As we walked the isles I asked them, \u201cWhat is the top selling soup? What is the top selling soft drink? \u00a0What is the number one selling cigarette? What is the best selling beer? \u00a0What is the number one selling popular priced beer?\u201d\u00a0 Of course, they always got the answers right, but then I’d ask, “What do all of these top selling products have in common?”\u00a0 I can’t ever recall that they said, “Their packaging is predominately red.”\u00a0 Campbell soup was red, Coke Cola was red, Marlboro cigarettes are red, Budweiser (number one then) was red, Old Milwaukee (number one then) was red, and even Coors six pack wraps (cardboard), at the time, were red.\u00a0 Coors during that time period was number one<\/i> in all western states.<\/p>\n

One of Schlitz’ successes was its malt liquor, “The Bull.”\u00a0 It was, by far, the number one selling malt for many years.\u00a0\u00a0 The ABV was over five percent, which is interesting, in that crafts now have, for the most part, higher ABVs then the old malt liquors!\u00a0 Regardless, AB came out with a malt liquor in the 70’s to compete with Schlitz.\u00a0 It was called “Budweiser Malt Liquor” and the tagline was, “It’s the first malt liquor good enough to be called Budweiser!”\u00a0 It was packaged in a black<\/em> can.\u00a0 It failed and did not last long.\u00a0 The reason given at that time for the failure wasn’t due to lack of support, distribution or pricing; the brand had all these elements, but the failure was because of the black<\/em> can.\u00a0 The consumer rejected the packaging, or at least, that was what the brewery blamed on the brand\u2019s failure.<\/p>\n

The two colors that seem to predominate in today’s\u00a0packaging are silver and blue.\u00a0 The consumer seems to accept these colors, which are on Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite and Bud Light Platinum.<\/p>\n

Recently the Wall Street Journal<\/i> wrote that many CPC\u00a0were introducing products that were packaged in black, with ABI leading the way with its Beck’s Sapphire, and more recently, Budweiser Black Crown.\u00a0 Given the history of “black”<\/em> packaging, it should be interesting to follow how these two highly supported products sell.<\/p>\n

In recent years, marketing has been more about mountains that turn color, aluminum bottles,\u00a0vortex bottle necks, new bottles (Heineken, Miller Lite) and different package sizes.\u00a0 Consumers want the package to tell a story.\u00a0 \u00a0Will black<\/em> be the story of 2013? \u00a0Or will the story be for those who do not remember the past and are condemned to repeat it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Over the years, I had the opportunity to address a number of college classes on the beer industry.\u00a0 At the beginning, my talks were all about marketing, how marketing was used in the industry and how the industry\u00a0was evolving.\u00a0 Once Philip Morris bought the Miller Brewing Company, and introduced their idea of marketing from […]<\/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":"","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":false,"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-ay","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":676,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}