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Marketing b.s... #BigBeer'sStillBuyin'It

8/30/2014

It's timeless!

Sixty-seven years ago, just about the time "modern marketing" was getting its wings, and twenty years before the era dramatized in the "Mad Men" television series, came the classic movie, "The Hucksters." In one memorable scene, ad-guy Clark Gable got a lesson in marketing b.s. from the legendary Sydney Greenstreet playing Evan Llewellen Evans, head of a fictional soap-manufacturing company.

Here's the three-minute scene, with the b.s. coming near the end:

And don't think this ad doesn't reflect a gullible reality populated with legions of today's marketing execs. Many are every bit as clueless and ready to seize on whatever gimmick spews forth from "the digital world."

Beer wars degenerate to hashtag skrimishing

Take the buzzwordy "content marketing," today's equivalent of Syndney Greenstreet's marketing wisdom.

"Irritate! Irritate!! Irritate!!!" as the key to getting folks to buy your product? It may seem laughable marketing advice in the era of the milennials, but in fact, throughout the Mad Men period and beyond, some advertisers embraced it.

Today no big-name marketer would ever spout such nonsense, right? I mean, modern marketers know all about how to sell their products. Sure they know social media is in vogue and all that. But they're way too smart to "drink the Kool-Aid," and fall head-over-heels for every crazy new-media notion.

Aren't they?

This hysterical Adobe commercial suggests otherwise.

Consider how one Anheuser-Busch marketing VP brags to the press about his brewery's multi-million-dollar effort behind "#UpForWhatever" this summer? He boasts, it's "content marketing on steroids."

Has he been marketing without content up to this point? Or does he think his job is the marketing of content? In that event, he needs to be reminded his marketing's supposed to be selling beer! Either way, hold the 'roids.

Not to be outdone in the hashtag-bragging department, from the erstwhile competiton at MillerCoors comes this bit of p.r. return-fire: “#ItsMillerTime has received more social media mentions,"... “40 times more than #UpForWhatever." Orly.

I'm reminded of my favorite market-research quote: "The other side of what is really so, is, "Really? So what."

All these years later and...

Marketing b.s. is still... #bullshit.

Woo woo.

Coors Light @ 7¢ a can

8/24/2014

The Silver Bullet's lemon

Lazy marketers are big supporters of line extensions. "It's easy volume," they'll tell you. "There's no risk." And "It always looks good on your resumé."

Wrong. Wrong. And wrong.

"We're only brewing a limited quantity," said the brand's marketing honcho a few months back. Apparently not limited enough.

The lure of "easy incremental volume"

Launched with fanfare earlier this year at MillerCoors' distributor convention, Coors Light Summer Brew was big news for the coming season. Just as the Silver Bullet's momentum was starting to fade, here comes the "innovation" of a quick line extension designed by the marketing folks to siphon volume from soft drinks. It would mean new money for their beer distributors. What's not to like?

This is a no-brainer.

This hat trick of stupidity has rarely been as dramatically-- or as quickly-- demonstrated as by the line extension born of a lemon, Coors Light Summer Brew. Even before one season ends, inventory is clogging shelves. According to published reports* some Wal-Mart stores are cutting prices of 12-packs to $3.88, before a $3 coupon.

Do the math: That's 7¢-a-can.

All this for $3!!

More risk, not less

The MillerCoors CEO, using the turgid language only corporate big-shots employ, called it: "renovating core scale brands to increase their relevance." But where was the critical thinking CEOs are supposed to possess? If Coors Light needed a lift, wouldn't it be wise to first address its "relevance" issues directly?

When an organization instead chooses to invest effort behind a line extension, that effort must come from somewhere. Sales-execution is a zero-sum game, so new items rob attention from other brands. And in the end, every line extension steals sales disproportionately from its parent brand for a simple reason: The people most likely to try something new with "Coors Light" on it, are those already most familiar with Coors Light. What exactly is the point of encouraging loyal drinkers to become triers of some new beer they may find unpalatable? Are they then more likely to come back... or just move on?

Well, what did we lose, really?

Coors Light Summer Brew will be quietly buried. No one will get fired, because doing so would only draw attention to the organization's all-out commitment to a bad idea. The marketers at the brewery will console each other saying nothing was really lost.

Truth is, lots was lost.

A full season of focus on the struggling parent brand is gone forever. The sales organization's diminished confidence in the marketing gurus who told them this was all a good idea, will only make future selling efforts more difficult. Distributors who paid MillerCoors one price for their inventory, and then had no choice but to sell it to retailers for much less, know exactly how much they've lost. And those retailers, seeing a Coors Light product going out the door for 44-cents a six, will rightly wonder if the Silver Bullet has completely lost its mojo. That perception may be the biggest loss of all.

In so many ways, it turns out, Coors Light Summer Brew really was... a no-brainer.

R.I.P.

* Beer Marketer's Insights Express, August 20, 2014

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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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Marketing b.s... #BigBeer'sStillBuyin'It

Coors Light @ 7¢ a can

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