Over the years, I had the opportunity to address a number of college classes on the beer industry. At the beginning, my talks were all about marketing, how marketing was used in the industry and how the industry was evolving. Once Philip Morris bought the Miller Brewing Company, and introduced their idea of marketing from their cigarette division, things ramped up dramatically. PM’s aggressive approach woke up the 800 pound gorilla, AB, and everything changed. Because of that, the industry became highly visible to the world of marketing.
One of the lessons I taught students and my employees was to visit a large grocery store to learn about the packaging of the number one selling products. As we walked the isles I asked them, “What is the top selling soup? What is the top selling soft drink? What is the number one selling cigarette? What is the best selling beer? What is the number one selling popular priced beer?” Of course, they always got the answers right, but then I’d ask, “What do all of these top selling products have in common?” I can’t ever recall that they said, “Their packaging is predominately red.” Campbell soup was red, Coke Cola was red, Marlboro cigarettes are red, Budweiser (number one then) was red, Old Milwaukee (number one then) was red, and even Coors six pack wraps (cardboard), at the time, were red. Coors during that time period was number one in all western states.
One of Schlitz’ successes was its malt liquor, “The Bull.” It was, by far, the number one selling malt for many years. The ABV was over five percent, which is interesting, in that crafts now have, for the most part, higher ABVs then the old malt liquors! Regardless, AB came out with a malt liquor in the 70’s to compete with Schlitz. It was called “Budweiser Malt Liquor” and the tagline was, “It’s the first malt liquor good enough to be called Budweiser!” It was packaged in a black can. It failed and did not last long. The reason given at that time for the failure wasn’t due to lack of support, distribution or pricing; the brand had all these elements, but the failure was because of the black can. The consumer rejected the packaging, or at least, that was what the brewery blamed on the brand’s failure.
The two colors that seem to predominate in today’s packaging are silver and blue. The consumer seems to accept these colors, which are on Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite and Bud Light Platinum.
Recently the Wall Street Journal wrote that many CPC were introducing products that were packaged in black, with ABI leading the way with its Beck’s Sapphire, and more recently, Budweiser Black Crown. Given the history of “black” packaging, it should be interesting to follow how these two highly supported products sell.
In recent years, marketing has been more about mountains that turn color, aluminum bottles, vortex bottle necks, new bottles (Heineken, Miller Lite) and different package sizes. Consumers want the package to tell a story. Will black be the story of 2013? Or will the story be for those who do not remember the past and are condemned to repeat it?
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