Today’s infographic is all about Beer in India, showing several data points about India’s brewing industry and beers. It was created by Start Up Media, and I chose it for today because it’s the start of Ganesh Chaturthi, the Indian elephant god festival.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Wednesday’s ad is for Narragansett Lager Beer, from 1963. Billing itself as “One of America’s Great Breweries,” presumably thanks to it’s “straight-from-the-barrel taste” that’s also “Light, Mild and Refreshing.” Plus there’s a beautiful shot of the brewery, though I can’t tell if that’s a photograph or a painting.
Today’s infographic, Love & Libations: America’s Drunkest Singles, was created by Howaboutwe, a dating website for singles and couples, apparently. The chart shows a breakdown of drinking patterns based on a variety of factors, such as religion, gender and education.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
A group of New Zealanders played a massive prank on a friend of theirs by sneaking into his house and re-plumbing every faucet and shower head so that beer, not water, came out no matter where he turned it on. They used kegged beer hidden behind walls and also installed hidden cameras to catch their friend’s reaction to the fun. Here’s how they describe it on YouTube.
Me and the boys played a bit of a joke on our mate Russ. Kegs of beer have been plumbed into every tap in the house, with loads of cameras to catch the action. Took us all day to set up but it was worth it when the icy cool beer came pouring out.
Thanks to Bulletin reader Russ R. for sending me the link. Check out the story below.
Tuesday’s ad is for Rheingold Beer, from 1947, and features Miss Rheingold from that year, Michaele Fallon. She’s riding a roller coaster called the “Rocket,” with her dog on her lap. I can’t imagine the dog is happy about that. There was a famous Rocket roller coaster in Ocean View Amusement Park in Norfolk, Virginia, but it was torn down in 1979, after filmmakers competed the movie “The Death of Ocean View Park.”
Today’s infographic has no title but the filename is “Handy Beer Flavor Chart.” It apparently was created by the Beer Life, a website that appears to no longer be active. While not entirely accurate, it is at least an interesting and different approach to showing the range of different kinds of beers.
Click here to see the chart full size.
Here’s a hilarious marketing development, one that would absolutely never fly in the land of the free and the home of the “think about the children” neo-prohibitionists. If you’ve been the parent of a young daughter, you’re probably already familiar with the marketing juggernaut that is Hello Kitty and her legion of cute minions from Sanrio. It’s hard to think of another character with as much licensed tie-in merchandising as Hello Kitty. She makes Disney look like amateurs. So really, it should come as no surprise then, that Sanrio has licensed Hello Kitty for a series of four fruit beers, brewed by the Taiwan Tsing Beer Co.. The four initial fruit beers include Peach, Passion Fruit, Banana and Lemon and come in 330 ml cans.
Bloomberg Businessweek referred to the announcement as Zen and the Art of Crass Marketing, which is surprising since I never really thought of the business press, or indeed the business world generally, as having high moral standards if there was a buck to be made. When you consider that it was big business that sank the country, and the world, into a global recession, then getting a bailout from us, while still collecting their bonuses, I have had time swallowing Bloomberg’s assertion that this is the line that business dare not cross, that this is the one going too far into crassness. If anything, this is pretty harmless and funny.
The ABC News Report is slightly more balanced, and reveals that these “new fruit-flavored cans mark Hello Kitty’s second entry into the world of alcohol. Previously, Hello Kitty wines were licensed in Asia, Europe and the United States.”
I can’t say any of them look particularly good, but one thing most news accounts overlooked is that the beer is actually only 2.3% a.b.v., making them session beers, and actually the opposite of the evil Bloomberg makes them out to be. Also, Kotaku, reviewing the beers, describes them as “closest to Chimay but with stronger fruit flavorings. The fruit isn’t a note or a sense in these beverages but instead the overpowering star of it all.” That’s hard to swallow, but then I haven’t actually tried them and it’s likely I won’t ever have the chance to, not that it will keep me up at night. Still, an odd and twisted development.
Monday’s ad is for Pabst Blue Ribbon, from May 1942. This one involves a ping pong, err … table tennis, match and was created by well-known illustrator Albert Dorne. Using the Pabst tagline about 33 to 1, that’s also the score in the game, which sparks a bit of a goofy discussion.
CraftBeer.com, the consumer website for the Brewers Association released today the results of an online poll that took place in the last half of August. Here’s how they arrived at the 2013 Great American Beer Bar Selected by CraftBeer.com Readers. “CraftBeer.com asked readers to nominate their favorite craft beer bars in the country, and received over 5,000 nominations, a 117 percent increase from last year. The choices were then narrowed down to the 10 most nominated bars in each of the five regions of the country. Over 37,000 votes were cast in total, a 23 percent increase from last year, resulting in the top three overall and regional winners. Voting was conducted from August 19 until August 30.” I’ve never been to any of the top three, so I guess I’ve got some travel plans to make.
The overall winners were roughly on the eastern half of the country.
The Pacific (west coast) winners are as follows:
Great to see the Toronado making the list.
Today’s infographic is an interesting one, created by Olivia Vander Tuig at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, during the Spring of this year, in collaboration with Annie-Locke Scherer and Madelyn Willey. The infographic compares the beer brands Pabst Blue Ribbon, Guinness, Miller High Life, and Heineken, and was made as a companion for a travel studio about branding and factory experience called Behind the Brand.
Click here to see the infographic full size. You can also download a much larger version from dropbox.
