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Wall Street analyst is no expert on beer ads

9/17/2017

 
A recent release from Beer Marketers Insights carried this call to the new Bud Light marketing Honcho: "Bring back the funny." The article went on to tell how a certain Wall Street analyst had made a study of what makes for successful ads. It didn't say whether this was on company time when he was being paid to help large investors choose stocks with the best probability of high returns at lowest risk, which of course, is his job. It also didn't provide a scintilla of information about where he acquired his advertising expertise. We had our opinion on his advertising advice (keep reading), but decided we should first see for ourselves how good he was at his day job.

​Like everything else, there's a website with this information.
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So here's how the unbiased TipRanks folks evaluated the analyst in question:
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Perhaps this explains why Analyst #7,140 is now offering his personal opinions about... advertising. Not many brokerage customers would much give a damn about the stock picks of the 7,140th analyst out of 10,000 "overall experts."

​Incredibly, his advertising judgment may actually be a bit worse than his stock-picking rating suggests.

Bad advice

Analyst #7,140's advice for successful ads focused on three key requirements: humor, "emotional resonance," and production values. Humor is unmistakably #1 on his list.

Now you'd think that any analyst's careful analysis about what works in advertising might include looking closely at today's big winner brands in the beer business. These are the brands coining real money.
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A beer from Mexico... a beer made in the Rockies... a beer that's low in calories and carbohydrates
Is humor driving the decades of Corona sales growth behind a single advertising idea? Is there any "funny" in the Coors Banquet ad campaign with a similar track record of driving sales? Have you giggled through any of the workout-themed ads propelling Michelob Ultra sales up over 20% for several years now? Nope. Nope. And nope.

Analyst #7,140's "analysis" missed the key driver of successful beer ads, namely a focus on what makes your  brand different from, and implicitly superior to, other brands. Although humor (and other ad gimmickry like "emotional resonance" and production values) can certainly be used to make the point of product distinctiveness, chasing humor alone is like trying to quench your thirst with an empty beer glass. There's no substance.

We wouldn't think of offering our own ideas for stock-market picks. If we did, you'd almost certainly lose money by following our advice.

​On the other hand, our advice on humor for Bud Light (and other beer brands) is pretty much money in the bank.

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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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