They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Looks like it applies to beer, too.

Back in the 1980s, Bud Light was a brand on a mission. Anheuser-Busch had dangerously underestimated the potential of light beer. So Miller Lite got off to a fast, unopposed start and soon dominated the rapidly growing category. Coors Light was just beginning to come on fast, too. August Busch decided enough was enough, and belatedly entered the upstart light beer category. The first ads launched "Budweiser Light" and looked pretty much like dozens of other beer ads of the day. The only distinctiveness came from the Budweiser name, and the beer world already had a Budweiser. Sales were underwhelming. August was not happy.

With nothing distinctive beyond its brand name, Budweiser Light couldn't seriously dent the brand that created the light-beer category. When people asked for a light beer at the bar, they always got a Miller Lite.

Distinctiveness to the rescue

How to close the gap? Getting to number-one was precisely the challenge August Busch gave his ad agency. Failure was not an option. The King of Beers would not tolerate a second-place light- beer sibling. Bud Light needed to come off as a better light-beer choice than Miller Lite. It needed to be distinctive. And competitive. Here are two of the many ads in the campaign created to do just that...

How were the ads received? The ad-agency account guy at the time who led the charge (and for whom I later worked) once told me most creative people at his agency hated the "Gimme a light" idea. "Pedantic and heavy-handed," they said. Not hip enough or leading-edge. "These aren't going to win us any awards," they whined. 

But whatever the ads may have lacked in hipness, they more than made up for in distinctiveness.The "won't-fill-you-up taste that never lets you down" claim differentiated the brand. And saying everything else--including Miller Lite--was "just a light," impugned the competition as less desirable, less of a beer. Before long, when people asked for "a light beer" at a bar, the waiter often responded with "A light or a Bud Light?" This ad campaign put Bud Light out in front to stay.

​A case study?

Now, almost 30 years later, Bud Light just returned to its "Gimme a light" campaign, if only for a single national airing.

Looking anew at that '80s (not '90s) Bud Light campaign might have presented the brand with valuable case-study learning. As is often the case, history teaches, but only if we're willing to learn.

This was an opportunity for someone in the Bud Light brain trust to note that competitively selling the distinctiveness of the beer can pay real dividends. Surely one of the brand people must've seen that sales responded pretty quickly back in the day when vapid, entertainment-based ads were abandoned in favor of ads devoted to selling. Might the top marketing leadership now see the light (pun intended) and lead the way to new ads designed to actually sell more beer?

The Bud Light horse has been led to water. Will it drink?

Decide for yourself. The brand just released this new national ad...

More of the mildly amusing or offensive (depending on your viewpoint) celebrity pitch-people yakking about quasi-political issues. Nothing whatsoever to present the beer as distinctive. Forgettable humor in place of a real selling message.

Bud Light sales have already fallen 2.5% since this ad campaign first appeared earlier this year. That's the worst performance among the three major light beers, and it's getting even worse. As Beer Marketer's Insights just put it: "...while Bud Light keeps rolling out new ads, its volume loss accelerated last 4 weeks." In our view, that underlined bit should've begun with "because," not "while." The ads are causing the lost sales.

Looks like the stupid horse may die of thirst.

William K. Coors--"Uncle Bill" to many, even those not in the Coors family--turned 100 years old today. When the term "beer baron" was coined, I'm pretty sure Bill Coors' image appeared on the heads side of that coin.

It could be reasonably argued that Bill Coors was personally responsible for the most significant bit of innovation to occur in beer marketing over a century, namely the aluminum beverage can. To say it transformed the industry is no exaggeration. And it's still going on as craft brewers routinely trumpet their moves into that package. Though the original idea was not his, it was Bill Coors who, by force of will, and against then conventional wisdom, transformed the idea into reality. (You can read the whole story here.) 

Two legends and their advertising

Over my three-decades-long career in advertising, I had the singular privilege of being able to see two true business giants at work. Bill Coors was one. Charlie Lubin, the founder and creator of the Sara Lee brand, was the other. Both were clients I served at Foote, Cone & Belding.

It says something that neither of these two giants held advertising in very high regard. But that wasn't really a bad thing. See, both men absolutely venerated the quality and distinctiveness of the products they brought to market. Cutting corners on quality was a suggestion hired-help managers made at great peril. I saw Charlie Lubin lambast such people to tears. The risk of making such a suggestion to Bill Coors could easily have involved physical violence.

This devotion to product made the job of the advertising people easier. Selling beer brewed with pure Rocky Mountain spring water, or pound cakes made with all butter, focused the advertising people, and more important, the advertising itself. Lesser competitors--and lesser men--worshiped advertising that foisted undifferentiated brands on gullible consumers. Bill and Charlie, a brewer and a baker, genuflected before the altar of distinctive quality. While neither man would ever call himself one, both men were the very best of marketers. And in my view, advertising geniuses.

Charlie left us years ago. I'm glad Bill's still here to savor hitting triple digits. We need our legends. And their marketing lessons.

​Happy birthday, Bill Coors.