Beer (tries) To Fight Back at Wine & Spirits
The beer industry, lead apparently by Anheuser Busch, seems to be struggling with ways to combat a slow migration away from beer and to wine and spirits.
Over the past few years beer has lost market share to wine and spirits, for a number of reasons. Beer’s latest attempt to win back drinkers is a form of Co-op advertising, getting the entire beer industry to back a single message, sans brand expression, that promote
The only thing I’ve ever seen the entire wine industry get behind is opposition to a tax increase in CA on alcohol sales. Even the direct shipping issue, one you’d think would galvanize all the wineries in America, saw some producers, particularly Gallo, take stands against direct shipping.
In most cases, the splits have been between large and small wine producers. And this makes sense. They have different interests, different demographics to address, and different economies to consider. My guess is that it is exactly the same in the beer industry.
Nevertheless, I’m a huge proponent of Co-op, industry wide advertising efforts. It words when done effectively and when the message is targeted and consistent over time. But this takes us back to getting wine, or beer, to flow up hill. Many small, high quality producers with expensive bottlings to sell, see no reason to back a marketing campaign aimed at drawing in new wine drinkers who are likely to take up with $8 plonk. How does it benefit the quality producer of wine that demands $40 for their wines? I suspect the same issue will come to a head with the beer makers.
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