@HeyBeerDan
  • WHO IS "HeyBeerDan?"
  • TITLE INDEX to all articles
  • CONTACT HeyBeerDan

MillerCoors performs a lobotomy on itself

8/7/2015

 
Picture
Advertising Age headline
The newly promoted top executives at MillerCoors just struck a blow for... ignorance.

As we've pointed out before, changing ad agencies is the go-to move when new people take the reins. Among other things, firing an agency is a power trip. It tells everyone there's a new sheriff in town, someone not to be trifled with. And the new agency becomes captive to the whims of that sheriff. All three of BigBeer's biggest light-beer brands have terminated their ad agencies in the last six months. This has never happened before. 

But the ugly side of an agency switch can be the sudden and complete loss of institutional memory for a brand. Embracing the proverbial "fresh sheet of paper," clients jettison a wealth of lived history, a deep and ingrained knowledge of the errors, miscues, and triumphs of the brand's past. When an agency has lived this experience, it provides a client an important outside perspective available nowhere else.

Those who make such changes often argue the client retains that institutional knowledge within its own people. Years ago, they might have been correct in this assertion. But today's BigBeer marketing departments rarely have any "old hands" in their ranks. Few client people in place these days have three years' experience on the brands, much less thirty years' experience. This is certainly true of the MillerCoors new top marketing guy.

To be sure, ad agency people are not all good brand historians. Many pursue their own agendas rather than serve the brand's best interests. Yet simply jettisoning nearly forty years of accumulated agency-brand experience, as MillerCoors just did, ought to be grounds for some worry. Institutional memory doesn't provide a reliable guide for every marketing decision. But it can certainly help avoid some of the marketing disasters a new agency might recommend as "unprecedented opportunities."

It's been said before: Those who forget the mistakes of the past increase their odds of making those same mistakes again. Another adage: Ignorance is bliss.

Don't be surprised if Coors Light's yet-to-come new advertising displays the mistakes only ignorant bliss can explain.
Picture

Picture

Comments are closed.

    Subscribe to New-article updates from HeyBeerDan

    * Note: Certain video links may not function in emailed articles.
    Picture

    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.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.