Sunday’s holiday ad is for Budweiser, from 1959. Part of Bud’s “Where There’s Life … There’s Bud” series, the ad shows a woman who’s busy wrapping presents, while an unseen hand is pouring her a beer. See the delight on her face? I also love the ad copy for this one. “Just a warm wish to you and yours for a happy, perfectly wonderful Holiday Season.” Even back in the late 1950s the war against Xmas was raging. “Holiday Season?” Bah.
Today’s infographic takes a look at how much money you could save by making your own beer at home. In makes some assumption, then goes through calculations of how much to costs to make versus buy beer. It was created by Dimespring, a financial website.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Saturday’s ad is for Boswell’s Ales & Porter, from early last century. A Canadian beer brand, beginning in 1909, it became part of National Breweries Limited, although it apparently Boswell’s originally opened in 1668, making it North America’s 2nd oldest brewery and Canada’s first (According to a 1910 newspaper ad).
These always give me a chuckle. Whenever sales are flagging, one of the strategies employed by the bigger beer companies to reverse their fortunes is to change the packaging. Earlier this month, Miller sent out a press release, “Celebrate Miller Time with the Light Beer that Started It All.” They’re bringing back the original can design for Miller Lite, their unnatural abomination of a diet beer. My thoughts on low-calorie light beer are very opinionated, and none too positive, for example read Disrespecting Low-Calorie Light Beer and No Defense For Light Beer.
Here’s the press release:
The Original Lite Can features the familiar images of hops, barley and the words “a fine pilsner beer,” which reinforce the high quality ingredients and the unique brewing process that consumers have enjoyed for generations.
“There was a time when all that existed was heavy beer that weighed you down,” said Elina Vives, marketing director for Miller Lite. “The launch of Miller Lite broke this category convention and offered beer drinkers the best of both worlds, great taste at only 96 calories and 3.2 carbs. Miller Lite is the original light beer and this limited-edition can celebrates that innovation and helps inform consumers of the rich history behind our beer.”
In addition to becoming available to consumers in January, the Original Lite Can will appear in the upcoming Paramount Pictures’ release, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. The news team can be seen enjoying the Original Lite in the film, which will be released nationwide December 18.
The limited-edition Original Lite Can will be available nationwide January through March in 12-, 16- and 24-ounce sizes.
All well and good, but sheesh, why not just make a beer that people would want to drink, not one you have to market and advertise to death to create demand? Can people really be nostalgic for that can design? But that seems to be used a marketing tactic every few years, to change the package, the label or something along those lines. It’s indicative of a culture that’s long ago abandoned the importance of what’s inside the package and instead has been concentrating on the external. Sure, how the packaging looks is important, but it’s not more important than the beer, and for big beer companies it surely seems like marketing has trumped any other concerns for many, many years.
Calling it a “Pilsner beer,” of course, strains the notion of what a pilsner is.
Today’s infographic, entitled Beer in Europe, showing data on the price of beer and other factoids about European beer, as of October of this year. It was created by Flights.idealo.co.uk, a British travel website.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Friday’s ad is for Navy’s Christmas Ale, from the 1930s. It was a brand of the Brouwerij La Marine, from Brussels, Belgium. According to one collecting website. “The La Marine brewery was formed when it took over the Marly Brewery which itself was a merging of the Struyen, Dineur and Dumortier breweries with the l’Alliance brewery. It was subsequently taken over by Wielemans-Ceuppens and stopped brewing in 1980.”
Here’s a cool video of artist Ben Steele creating four different paintings of a Samuel Adams bottle and glass in the style of four different cultures or artists representing what they call “the 4 most influential beer cultures.” Steele imagines how artists from Egypt, Belgium, Germany and America would depict Samuel Adams Boston Lager by creating four works or art in those styles. The Belgian work was done in the style of Vincent Van Gogh (although he was Dutch) and the American version was reminiscent of Roy Lichtenstein. The Egyptian one is as if it were carved in stone, though it’s not clear to me what he was going for with the German. It looks to me like a photo-realist painting. It will be fin to see these individually as posters or larger, at least. There’s even a contest to caption the cartoon text bubble in the last painting. What do you think it should say?
Today’s infographic is entitled Visualization Home Brew, offering “five full-bodied graphics based on data about U.S. beers” from Beutler Ink.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Thursday’s ad is for O’Keefe’s Ale, from 1953. Showing either a tiny wreath or a giant crown, it’s actually a cool-looking Christmas wreath, but what I really love is the ad copy: “When good friends get together they say O.K. for O’Keefe’s.” Followed by “No finer ale was ever brewed.” Pretty bold coda.
There was an interesting little item in this month’s issue of Playboy, in the Raw Data section, that mentioned a “study of behaviors that get you served first in a crowded bar.” They found “that people standing square to the bar were served within 35 seconds 95% of the time.” Anyone have a read on how accurate that is, or whether you’ve noticed that it works? They also claimed that “eye contact was essential 86% of the time,” which makes some intuitive sense, at least.
