Tag Archives: Advertisement

Blogs, Influence, Social Media

This Blog’s for You: How Beer indicates a Changing Marketplace.

When Anheuser-Busch’s sale to InBev was announced, years of branding began to unravel for the King of Beers. The maker of the Great American Lager (their slogan) was a family-owned business based in the American Midwest which had spent decades creating their brand based around nationalism and tradition; they were being purchased by a foreign corporate conglomerate. Almost immediately columnists were writing about how the sale was indicative not of globalization but of the American economic recession.

In spite of how the stories were framed, A-B products Budweiser and Bud Light continue to be the best selling beers in the United States (if not the world). The sale is only the latest consolidation between the world’s largest brewers; in the years prior rivals like Miller and Coors had combined into SABMiller, not to mention A-B’s own acquisitions before their own sale.  The beer business is as complex as any other industry, but major brewers like Anheuser-Busch have relied on a wide national market empowered by mass market advertising to drive up demand for their product.

The rising popularity of Craft Beer parallels the changing media landscape of the past decade; as audiences become fragmented, their consumption choices are changing.  Once mass market advertising for brewers would create print and broadcast ads designed to appeal to the widest audiences where they converged in a limited media market.  Brand loyalty was thought to begin when young adults learned about their products, and like their beers these branding techniques were meant to reach the largest audiences.  However this same target audience no longer converges in the same mass media sources, often turning online to learn about new products across a ever wider range of new media; about the only place this market would still see their ads might be watching the Superbowl, during which only the largest brewers can afford to advertise.

Consumers today have more choices in where they get their media from, especially online, which have opened up opportunities to build niche audiences like those in the craft beer market.  Along with a growing audience of beer lovers, craft breweries have taken to blogs and social media to promote their products.  This audience is passionate about their interest in craft beer, inspiring brand loyalty among those who are reached out to directly by brewers who share their values, not unlike the nationalism appealed to in Budweiser’s branding.  Most importantly this passionate audience of craft beer advocates likes to tell others about the beers they love, usually acting as opinion leaders within their network of friends and thusly growing the market for tasty craft beer every year.

Of course mass marketing still works in many markets; many consumers of Blue Moon (a SAB Miller/Coors product) believe it is a craft beer, and niche beers like A-B’s Michelob brand enjoy limited popularity. But the mass media advertising techinques do not work as well online, as demonstrated by the expensive failure of Bud.tv and other websites.  It has been suggested that beer in America’s national beverage, and as America changes so will it’s tastes.

You can learn more about Beer marketing and the craft beer movement by reading my blog The Brew Noob (on Twitter @BrewNoob).

Blogs, Ideas

Blog Action Day: Changing Minds (and Climate)

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Climate change is a fact, but it’s also a choice. Everyday we make decisions about our energy consumption, most of which will have an effect on global warming. Sometimes these decisions are impacted by policy, but climate change is not inevitable; we can slow and maybe prevent its effects through our own energy conservation choices.

This year’s Blog Action Day is a call to speak out about climate change, but by now most of us know what we should say about global warming. Probably the biggest contribution individuals can make is to turn their attitudes into behavior, at least by adopting energy conservation as a way of life.

In my Master’s thesis I compared different strategies to promoting energy conservation through case studies of three communication campaigns, including We Can Solve It, Flex Your Power, and Energy Star. As an example the above advertisement, from the Flex Your Power program in California (following their energy crisis in 2000), is only one part of a comprehensive social marketing campaign which has successfully reduced total energy consumption by at least 14%. These ads go further than merely providing all the reasons you’d want to save energy, because they give people actions to use in a way which make them seem fun and easy.

Of course no one approach to this issue works with every audience, and energy conservation is only part of the solution to climate change. In the future I’ll be posting more about my original research into energy and communication, but on Blog Action Day I would encourage you to do your own research.  My former professor Matthew Nisbet has studied communication about climate change, which he blogs about extensively, which helped inspire my own study of energy conservation.  Perhaps leading your own study about what you can do would be the best use of your energy today…

Ideas

June’s 7

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Mr YogatoIn the month or so since my last update my life has become busier than ever as a full-time Intern and a part-time student. Perhaps therein lies the time-deprived unironic logic behind this month’s list of great ideas that have entered my life recently. A day late, a buck short, I’m writing this report…

Art: Artomatic. No curators, no judges, just open-source art. Unlike most art shows, this series is democratic ordeal more like a craft fair, stretched out for weeks on end of open submissions with fine art. Now in its 10th year, Artomatic uses over 9 floors of space in an unfinished office building which compromises the showroom and performance art venue for this show, which runs through the 5th of July in DC.

Commercial: Dirt Cheap. Those from Saint Louis know what’s up, but for the uninitiated this is a local advertisement for a chain of liquor and tobacco stores.  The ads have been running for at least the past 20 years, usually featuring the famous Dirt Cheap chicken suit and the trademark “Cheap cheap! Fun fun!” Sometimes the ads that stick in your mind the most can be the ones that seem the cheesiest.

Meme: Downfall. It’s not a new meme, but it has become one of the more enduring. (Here’s a Primer if you don’t know what I’m talking about). Like any good meme, Downfall continues to surprise me with the creativity applied to decidedly Shakespearean tragedy within real life.

Music: Pandora. As a 4+ year loyalist to Last.fm it pains me to admit that I have been using Pandora lately. Without the benefit of the 19000 songs counted on the rival service, Pandora has done surprising work referring me to good music I would like. But mostly because I can use it in my browser at work.

Theme Party: Superhero. Grabbed a flier from a dude wearing a superman t-shirt in Williamsburg last Saturday. Besides a couple hundred people crammed into a warehouse with DJs, fire breathers, and a man on stilts, the main highlight were the great costumes by those who joined us. I played their Accountant, complete with a balance sheet and calculator. Perhaps not since Studio 54 has New York seen these costumed heroes.

Theory: Belief Formation. A belief is different from opinion, so a belief cannot be easily changed once it is set, unlike an attitude through communication. You need to be proactive in order to prevent an opinion about your reputation, responding to each negative criticism with at least 3 positive rebuts, from solidifying into a belief. Especially because we are more likely to believe the person pointing out our faults than the individual defending themselves, so it’s important to manage these risky discussions.

Word Game: Crossword Puzzles. Since I started work I’ve had the chance to play crosswords on my commute. Riding public transportation has put a free daily newspaper in my hands every morning, so I’m playing this game for the first time in years. So far enjoy the rock music references in The Onion’s crossword best, but I’m still trying the every day’s paper until I finally finish my first puzzle.