It's the very best gift beer marketers can bestow on their brands.

It comes wrapped in lots of different names: Brand essence... brand positioning... key brand focus... strategic center. 

The nomenclature is not all that important. But the underlying concept is absolutely critical: Define the fundamental notion the brand aims to own in consumers' heads. Critical, because without an understanding of its strategic center, a brand's long-term success is a virtual impossibility.

This strategic center...

- has to be simple, because most consumers won't devote much mental space to what a given beer brand stands for. 

- has to have some distinct appeal so the brand is seen as special. 

- has to be "unoccupied space" free of competitive brands.  

- has to be virtually timeless and not beholden to fads or fashion. 

Having identified such a clear strategic center, marketers then know exactly what they're aiming to achieve. So, while each of their brand's tactics will have its own creative angle, every ad, every digital effort, every sponsorship, every packaging initiative, indeed, every marketing tactic will connect to and support the same center.

Successful marketers know the power of getting this strategic center down, ideally in four words or less.

McDonald's = Food, folks, and fun.

Charmin = Softness.

Jeep = Rugged go-anywhere.

Costco = Always a good deal.

But lesser brands, lacking such a clear articulation, quickly succumb to the if-you-don't-stand-for-something-you'll-fall-for-anything trap. They wander. They lack focus. They opt to simply entertain. Or like a drunk in Vegas, they find inspiration in the moment, and stumble from one foolish bet to the next.

Anheuser-Busch should know all of this quite well. The brewery has only a single established brand that's growing: Michelob Ultra.  

And in a perfect correlation, Michelob Ultra also happens to be the only major Anheuser-Busch brand with a recognizable strategic center...

Michelob Ultra = Fitness beer.

Just look at how its online presence hews to this clear strategic center. Heck, it almost looks like the website belongs to a workout place!

Same for the advertising: Factual support includes fewer carbs and fewer calories. Outdoor activities dominate the visuals. Fit, in-shape folks are the only people shown. And the voice-over--admittedly in heavy-handed and flatfooted fashion--preaches "Long live the Ultra life" in advertising that looks like it might have as easily come from some other fitness-focused brand like Patagonia or Power Bars. 

So Santa...

While it would appear Michelob Ultra's strategic-center stocking is nicely filled, there's this matter of a...

Over the past decade or two, it could be reasonably argued that Corona achieved perfection in its advertising.  

Stunning Caribbean beach locations, aglow with turquoise water and white sand, were the consistent setting. In this perfect place, Corona’s cleverly wordless mini-dramas--featuring the perfect bodies of young women and men--played out in arresting fashion, ad after ad. (I say “bodies” because the actors’ faces were rarely visible.)  

Life on this Corona beach was idyllic relaxation: the pace was languid, a bikini-clad girl was always nearby, the palm trees swayed gently in seaside breezes, the calming sound of waves playing on the shore provided most of the soundtrack. And always within arm’s reach, cold Corona Extra, a slice of lime perched becomingly in the clear bottle’s neck.  

Everything really was… perfect.

If job #1 for beer advertising is to make the brand special, it’s hard to imagine doing a better job than Corona’s beach campaign. "Perfection" is the ultimate "special." In striking contrast to the tired repetitive scenes of commonplace beer ads, Corona gave us perfect relaxation… in an uncommon place. The brand stood apart. 

Then, a few years ago, something happened to perfection. Take a 
look...

That ever-so-perfect beach got invaded by "street people." You can almost hear the critique by a young marketing person in some advertising meeting: “Corona is sort of stuck on the beach. To be more relevant, we need to show what normal people are escaping from. Couldn’t we expand our appeal—and our volume—by referencing more drinking occasions than just island vacations?”  

For what it’s worth, I blame business schools for fostering this sort of overly “critical thinking.” Everything—including perfection—is approached as a case study to be pulled apart with an eye toward finding things to change. This is more than a bias toward change, it’s a marketing tautology: We must change to grow, so opposing change is opposing growth. Against that group-think, any passionate voice defending the simplicity and perfection of Corona's beach would be branded an enemy of growing the business, and silenced.

And so it goes.

Today's Corona advertising spends most of its time looking and feeling pretty much like so many other Big Beer ads. We get to see plenty of young adults in everyday situations. A single beach scene is stuck at the end "so we don't lose our equity," as our young marketing person no doubt reassures his management. But that beach snapshot lacks virtually every bit of what made it--and the brand--so powerful, so perfect. That's all gone.

With all of this, will Corona's business go off a cliff? 

Ah, that's the hell of it. The commanding strength of Corona's perfect beach is such that its fall will occur slowly. A champion prize-fighter can absorb lots of punishment before he goes to the mat. No doubt those who delivered the advertising punch to Corona will be long gone before the alarm bell rings. But make no mistake, when "special" is exchanged for "commonplace," it's not marketing. 

It's the beginning of the end.