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Miller Lite's "revolutionary" ad idea turns out to be the same as Budweiser's

3/18/2016

Remember the MillerCoors headlines from just a few weeks ago promising a "breakthrough ad campaign" for Miller Lite?

It has arrived.

And it's definitely solid work, but it's also far more imitative than revolutionary. Here's a look at the first three ads, and our first reaction.

We've nagged Miller Lite's marketing brain trust for the past three years to base the brand's advertising on the beer. While they routinely ignored us with any number of quirky off-point efforts, it appears that they weren't as quick to ignore Budweiser's pursuit of a product-distinctiveness-based ad strategy. Even harder to ignore were the positive sales trends the King of Beers has begun posting as a consequence.

Now Miller Lite offers the same sort of directness and unapologetic feel as Budweiser's "Brewed the Hard Way." To be sure, these first 15-second ads seem to lack the celebratory feel and the joy of Bud's work. And Lite's product-distinctiveness facts seem less substantial than Budweiser's. (Does the spelling of "light" really matter?)

Product-distinctiveness.

Product distinctiveness-2

But maybe we shouldn't be too hard on Lite. Focusing on product-distinctiveness is the key decision for beer-brand advertisers, and Lite got that part right. Finding the perfect creative style in the ads is important, but secondary. Complaining about less-than-stellar drama in these ads when the underlying premise is strong would be like whining about dispatchers not sending a newer-model ambulance when you're lying in the street with a compound fracture. The ambulance is the important part.

From a product-distinctiveness angle, Miller Lite has certainly seen the light... no matter how you spell it.

Clever, misleading and illegal: The ad claim pushing Henry's hard soda

3/14/2016

Alcohol-infused hard sodas are the beer industry's latest products designed to squeeze fizzy growth out of a stone-cold market. Coming on the heels of the now-fading hard-cider fad, and not that many years after hard ice teas and other alcho-pops, one wonders whether any previously alcohol-free beverage is off-limits. Can 5% ABV chocolate milk be very far off? (Editor's note: One of our alert readers informed us alcoholic-chocolate milk is already here!)

But we digress. The question we're exploring here concerns one marketer's trick to sell their new hard soda. The marketer is MillerCoors; the soda is Henry's; and the trick is advertising that's all at once, clever, misleading, and illegal.

Clever...

On one hand, we are impressed that MillerCoors chose a product-distinctiveness-based strategy for Henry's. Rather than relying only on kid-appealing flavors like orange and ginger ale, MillerCoors is aiming to differentiate their soda as... "hard-ish."

Pretty clever to coin a completely new word--and a comparative one at that--to describe alcohol strength.

... misleading...

Henry's ads explain that "hard-ish" is a synonym for "buck mild." And one explains Henry's distinctive alcohol content is "... not too hard because you've got stuff to do tomorrow."

One thing in common: Identical 4.2% alcohol content

We weren't able to find an independent definition for "hard-ish," but the Urban Dictionary does define "buck mild" as "opposite to buck wild." It goes on: "meaning that instead of going crazy, the subject... (is) relatively tame."

But Henry's is "tame" relative to what? Certainly not light beer. Henry's sodas carry the very same amount of alcohol as light beer, 4.2%. So, it appears the object of comparison must be... other hard sodas. But ask people how much alcohol is loaded into those root beers and cherry colas, and chances are, all you'll get is a blank stare.

Still, Henry's sure seems to be suggesting its sodas are somehow "low-alcohol." This in spite of the fact they do not meet the "less than 2.5%" federal standard for low-alcohol. (That standard is why light beers never pushed low-alcohol claims.)

Is suggesting that a 4.2% hard soda is low-alcohol--"buck mild," if you will-- misleading?

Of course it is

... and illegal...

Henry's clever alcohol-content descriptors--including "hard-ish"--should never have seen the light of television in the first place. Federal regulations are unambiguous on this...

We have previously lamented the seemingly sleepy TTB regulators (motto: "Protect the Public") who inexplicably allow nonsense like this to be green-lighted. Our lamenting continues. It seems the TTB no longer has the heart--or the guts--to enforce their own regulations.

Limits? What limits?

So, what's to stop MillerCoors--a company nominally committed to "responsible enjoyment of our products"--from further pushing the envelope? Apparently nothing.

The brewer is free, for example, to suggest who should drink their hard-ish sodas. Namely, really responsible parents!

We're not kidding. Take a look...

Your infant's asleep, but you wanna party-on with alcohol? No problem-o, mom and dad. Just go buck-mild!

(And if the kid wakes up, maybe give the little bugger a taste, too!)

How's that for "responsible enjoyment?"

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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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