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Beer strategy: The remarkable power of "place"

5/29/2014

 
Whether it was God's Country or the land of sky blue waters, "We're from a special place" has worked strategic magic for countless beer brands through the years. 
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Even when simply featured as a place of origin, a city or country added legitimacy, distinctiveness, and a cultural grounding to the brand. Milwaukee, Holland, Boston, Munich, and more have lent their names to highly successful beers. 
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It's reasonable to conclude, then, that a beer's real hometown matters to its drinkers. Maybe it makes the brand seem more human. Maybe it speaks to the brand's soul. Maybe guys just need to know where you hail from before they take you seriously. Regardless, a sense of place is a strategic asset. At the minimum, it helps differentiate a brand. And this advantage isn't limited to beer, as well-known brand hometowns for cereal, whiskey, and chocolate-- Battle Creek, Lynchburg, TN, and Hershey, PA-- demonstrate.
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Apparently, none of this has been lost on today's craft brewers. Many incorporate their hometown in their brand name. And nearly all of them celebrate their geographic roots, from Indiana farm country to the heart of Los Angeles.
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So, what about Big Beer? With the exception of Coors Banquet (the only one of their big brands that's growing), every major brand has all but abandoned incorporating a sense of their home into their ad strategy. Perhaps it's inevitable fallout in the age of beer-globalization.
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Do these mega-brewers even have a hometown? Where do they hail from? Are they world citizens without allegiance to any particular country? 

Do they even have... a soul?

In case you missed it: A revolutionary--and still timely--product-based selling idea for Miller Lite.

5/25/2014

 
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Originally published here late last year.
(Click on the cans.)

Meanwhile, expect the "commemorative cans" to end before too long as the sales lift they generated proves a short-lived faddish "blip" with no meaningful strategic change attached thereto.

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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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