DRAFT Magazine

You could make a strong argument that St. Louis — original home of Anheuser-Busch — is the American town that best symbolizes the mega-breweries. So then what does it say when craft brewery increases its market share in the city, while sales of Budweiser fall?

According to a recent survey conducted by Information Resources Inc., sales of A-B products in area supermarkets dropped by 6.4 percent during the 13-week period ending Nov. 1. Budweiser won’t disappear from the shelves any time soon — almost two out of every three beers sold in Missouri are still A-B products(!) — but craft beer sales shot up 17 percent in dollars over the same quarter-year period while MillerCoors jumped 2.7 percent as well. When officials tabulated all the numbers, they found that A-B lost 2.7 percent of its market share in its home city.

Much like Bud, competition is quintessentially American.

As has been a trend of late, last weekend’s Saturday Night Live was remarkably unfunny. Gerard Butler was the host, so yes; there was the necessary parody of “300”. But the evening truly, and literally, belonged to Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light Golden Wheat.

Budweiser not only purchased every second of national ad time for the episode, but also sponsored pre-commercial break clips of never-before-aired footage and bloopers from past SNL sketches. This marked the first time in SNL’s 35 seasons that a single advertiser bought out the entire show. Unfortunately, the lackluster ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ jokes along with quips at President Obama reminded viewers that SNL used to be funny, but hasn’t been so in long time.

Marketing for Bud Light Golden Wheat, which hit the shelves Oct. 5th, was integrated throughout the episode, making it difficult to determine where advertising ended and material began. This “hitting viewers over the head” policy is an old-fashioned approach, but has long-lasting effects with getting the new brand to stick in the ago of TiVo.

In fact, spending every commercial break with one product could be more common in the future. According to Advertising Age, an episode of Family Guy expected to air Nov. 8th will be sponsored by Microsoft; though there won’t be commercial breaks, Windows products are to make appearances throughout the episode.

So we understand Budweiser’s methods, but why SNL? It’s as if NBC was giving you subliminal messages like, “If they are drinking, perhaps they will think this is funny…”

– Sarah Whitmire

The nominations for the 61st Emmy Awards came out this morning, and Anheuser-Busch picked up two nods in the category of “Outstanding Commercial.” (Did anyone know this was an actual category?)

Anyhow, the Bud Light spot “Magazine Buyer” and the Budweiser spot “Circus” — both developed by DDB Chicago — earned the honor, although they will have stiff competition from what we can only assume is the favorite, the Hulu ad featuring Alec Baldwin as an alien.

Through the magic of the Internet, you can view both clips below.

Craft brewers from New Belgium and Sierra Nevada to the brewpub down your street have embraced green technology in their beermaking pursuits. Apparently, the big boys are listening.

An Anheuser-Busch brewery in Fairfield, California has installed six acres of photovoltaic solar arrays that provide approximately three percent of the power needed to run the plant. Additionally, “the facility also installed a Bio-Energy Recovery System to generate more than 15 percent of the brewery’s fuel needs by capturing the nutrients in brewing wastewater for conversion into biogas.”

By the end of the year, Budweiser plans to create enough energy using green means to produce five billion 12-oz. It just goes to show you that if you keep mimicking the craft industry, everything will be okay.

With the help of Brookston Beer Bulletin, we found an article in the St. Loius Business Journal detailing the flight of Anheuser-Busch employees after its merger with In Bev.

In total, roughly 2,400 staffers — including sports marketing guru Tony Ponturo, creative man Bob Lachky, and brewer Doug Muhleman — took early retirement or were laid off in December and January. Most employees who left are in their 40s and 50s, and remain hungry for work. They are flush with cash from sale of their stock and want to pursue new types of jobs.  Could dipping their toes into the craft beer world be the next step? (We doubt it, but we’d love to see them use their expertise to help smaller breweries expand.)

No, not an individual beer, the entire bottling line. Anheuser-Busch, which purchased the makers of the lovely green bottles three years ago from In Bev for $82 million, wants to sell the Rock. Actually, In Bev — the company that now owns AB — is looking to sell the beer that’s “Born Small Town.” Yes, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but just roll with it, okay?

According to The Wall Street Journal, potential suitors include North American Breweries Inc. — which purchased High Falls Brewing Co. and Labatt USA (from In Bev) earlier this year — and C2 Imports LLC. The article doesn’t mention anything about you owning it, but it’s always a possibility. You have $80 million lying around, right?