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Heineken shows Bud Light how to advertise

2/29/2016

(Click image to go to the full AdAge article.)

Just seven months ago, the two largest beer brands in the world, Heineken and Bud Light, announced they were looking for new advertising directions. We had long been lambasting both for their borrowed-interest "image ads," long on celebrities and entertainment, but completely void of any message about the beer. We suggested they consider "... communicating how (the) brand is distinctive and different from competition... choosing the most powerful product-anchored difference, and successfully dramatizing it..."

Today, Heineken unveiled its new worldwide advertising campaign. We couldn't be more impressed.

"There's more behind the star" reinforces this is advertising about the beer. The clever use of a "star," Benicio del Toro (not Antionio Banderas), dramatizes the distinctive differences in the beer: World famous...the only beer enjoyed in 192 countries around the world... samples sent from all the breweries back to the Netherlands... it tastes the same everywhere.

These are reasons to choose Heineken over other brands. And as we never grow tired of repeating, this is what advertising is supposed to do; this is how you sell beer.

Et tu, BL?

And what about Bud Light? Well, they're teasing their latest celebrity ad on Entertainment Tonight. Appropriate, too, because whatever "entertainment" there is in that campaign, there is absolutely no message telling us what's distinctive about Bud Light.

Heineken and Bud Light?

Somebody had to come out on top.

New advertising? Heineken comes out on top.

MillerCoors top marketing exec admits Lite® is lost... again

2/25/2016

Items from the trade press...

Translation: We're lost... again.

Ads that never spoke the brand's name

Getting ready to stand on-stage in front of a very large audience of MillerCoors distributors assembled for their annual convention in a few weeks, the beer company's latest top marketing guy must feel like a chubby Christian facing every hungry lion in the empire.

Like lions, beer distributors have good memories. So they remember the pronouncements from the company's marketing leaders...

- A year ago, the marketing exec on stage sang the praises of the new ad agency he'd personally chosen for Miller Lite. He was all agog over the agency's Los Angeles home, calling it "the intersection of all great things: creativity, design, technology, entertainment, music...." (We thought he sounded starstruck.)

- Same guy announced Miller Lite had "come back to talking about the beer." (We asked: "Think real hard: Can you name something-- anything--Miller Lite has said about the beer recently?")

- And it was the marketing head who introduced Miller Lite's latest batch of bodega-guy ads. He was delighted when the advertising trade press gushed about their "relaxed, indie-film feel." (We noted the ads never once mentioned the Lite brand name in audio, were void of any product claim, and served only to (slightly) entertain the audience.)

Well, a year has passed and the distributors are rightly agitated. One of their largest revenue brands is still sick, and the latest guy on stage is supposed to know how to cure it. But so far he's only been party to the most recent in an embarrassingly long string of ineffective Miller Lite ad campaigns.

The best ad agencies don't really work like this

Bring in the monkeys

So what's this marketing guy to do? How's he going to find ads that actually sell more beer?

It appears from press reports that he's joined the ranks of those who have chosen poorly. His gambit? Add several more network agencies to "help out," in the hope better work will come from greater numbers of creative people on the task. It's reminiscent of the old bromide that if enough monkeys are turned loose on typewriters, given sufficient time, one of them will write a great novel. Of course, there's never been such a novel. Similarly, producing effective advertising isn't about unleashing more monkeys, er, creative folks.

Miller Lite's real problem

Two years ago when MillerCoors had just appointed yet another new (but soon-to-be-replaced) ad agency, we said: "Miller Lite's advertising problem is the lack of an effective strategy." It still is.

Our advice back then remains the same today:

Good marketing strategy aims to cause change in behavior favoring the marketer's brand. To do this, a strategic notion needs to arouse interest in the brand being advertised, anchored in some attractive truth about the marketer's product. This will delight loyal customers even as it creates some level of doubt about choosing any competing brand (either named or implied) not blessed with the same product truth. In the end, effective strategy will always be provocative.

So, because we're unlikely to be invited to the distributor convention, here are three strategy questions we'd direct to the stage if we were there. And we'd want answers before they dimmed the lights and showed a single ad:

First, what will the ads dramatize that is special and distinctive about Miller Lite beer?

Second, are you certain Lite's current drinkers agree this element of distinctiveness is accurate; and prospective customers will find it provocative enough for them to consider trying the brand?

Third, have you, Mr. Top Marketing Exec--you personally not your legion of ad agencies--signed off as the sponsor of the strategy?

Place your bets

The distributors are betting their personal fortunes on the success of the Miller Lite ads... again. They have every right to expect advertising that sells beer, to say nothing of actually mentioning the brand's name.

But unless and until they are presented with an effective advertising strategy focused on the distinctiveness of Miller Lite beer, these lions of the beer business really will be betting on monkeys.

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The Author

Dan Fox is a real beer guy.

For more than half his 30-year career at ad agency, Foote, Cone & Belding, he ran the Coors Brewing account. Leading a group of dozens of advertising professionals, Dan also personally wrote the Pete Coors "Somewhere near Golden, Colorado" commercials, designed the Coors NASCAR graphics, authored sales-convention speeches, and most important of all, formulated marketing strategy for virtually every Coors brand, including Coors Light, Keystone, Killian's Irish Red and more. His proudest achievement? "Our team had every Coors brand growing at once."

Over his advertising career, Dan was personally involved in the analysis, planning and creation of thousands of ads for a variety of products and services. By way of this blog, he freely shares his expertise about what works, and what doesn't, when it comes to selling beer.

If you're in the beer-marketing business--or just interested in the subject--you may want to read what "HeyBeerDan" has to say.

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Heineken shows Bud Light how to advertise

MillerCoors top marketing exec admits Lite® is lost... again

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