Can an industry that has spent a fortune on TV ads featuring mud wrestlers and talking frogs suddenly change its stripes to appeal to the wine-and-cheese, single-malt Scotch crowd? The makers of Budweiser and other brands of beer hope so.
Anheuser-Busch, based in St. Louis, Mo., and its competitors are developing an industry-wide marketing campaign aimed at overhauling the image of the humble beer and staunching its declining share of the alcoholic beverage market. But Wharton faculty members say the campaign won't be easy. Tweaking a product's image is one thing, but revamping an image in such an all-encompassing manner is a big stretch. Yet they also suggest that the Anheuser-spearheaded effort stands a good chance of enhancing the appeal of microbreweries and perhaps some mass-market beers, like Michelob, that have already carved out a higher-end image. In addition, it may be possible to change the overall image of beer slowly over time if the industry gives the effort years to take hold.
"It is a challenge in general to change an image, especially the image of an entire product category," suggests marketing professor Patricia Williams. The beer industry faces an uphill battle in trying to "change the types of people who drink beer and the circumstances in which they consume it."
Besides, notes Stephen J. Hoch, chairman of Wharton's marketing department, any money spent on an industry-wide campaign would probably be dwarfed by the amount spent by individual breweries to sell their brands. Companies need to "figure out how they can move away from their old position," he says. "But frankly, they can't move too far away because they have a huge base of customers. This is a business driven by heavy users. How much can [companies] spend on this new ad campaign compared with what they already spend on heavy users?"
A Multi-pronged Approach
Robert Lachky, executive vice president of global industry development at Anheuser, told Knowledge@Wharton that the industry, working with the Beer Institute, a trade group, will use a multi-message approach involving not just TV ads, but also print and online media.
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