24/7 Wall St. had an interesting look at some beers that have fallen on hard times over the last five years. Entitled Nine Beers Americans No Longer Drink, it lists some mainstream beers that have experienced some amazing drops in sales from 2006 through last year. The data is from Beer Marketer’s Insights and the list includes nine beers that have experienced more than a one-third drop in sales — and in two cases two-thirds — over that five-year time period. Here’s the list:
- Michelob: 72% drop in sales, 2006-2011 (ABI)
- Michelob Light: 66.3% drop in sales, 2006-2011 (ABI)
- Budweiser Select: 60.8% drop in sales, 2006-2011 (ABI)
- Milwaukee’s Best: 57.1% drop in sales, 2006-2011 (MillerCoors)
- Old Milwaukee: 52.8% drop in sales, 2006-2011 (Pabst)
- Miller Genuine Draft: 52.3% drop in sales, 2006-2011 (MillerCoors)
- Amstel Light: 47.7% drop in sales, 2006-2011 (Heineken)
- Miller High Life Light: 37.6% drop in sales, 2006-2011 (MillerCoors)
- Milwaukee’s Best Light: 35.5% drop in sales, 2006-2011 (MillerCoors)
That’s a pretty remarkable list. A few of those used to be truly successful brands. The article also details how “to combat the growing popularity of craft brews, major breweries such as Anheuser-Busch Inbev and MillerCoors have aggressively marketed their own specialty beer.” Those include such stealth beers as Blue Moon, Shock Top, et al. That’s in addition to buying up craft brands such as Goose Island or creating separate marketing arms, like Tenth and Blake.
It will be interesting to see what these companies will do next as these brands drag down the ship with such titanic sinking sales. Will they take steps to reinvigorate these brands or jettison them from their portfolios and instead concentrate on craftier brands?
I’d like to see if the sales of Miller Lite have increased as much as MGD’s has decreased; ditto for Pabst (which is often the cheap brew on draft in smaller nightclubs in the Bay Area & probably is elsewhere as well) increasing as Old Milwaukee (which at one time Miller owned) bites the dust. I can understand Amstel’s decline, given the rise of the Euro vs. the dollar in that span & the lack of advertising compared to that from “Budswilloors” (Ken Schroeder, a former San Andreas Malt prez, coined that circa 1993). Bottom line is that the craft brewers are scaring the merde out of the megas.