Friday’s ad is from 1971 and is for the malt liquor Colt 45. Introduced in 1963 by National Brewing of Baltimore, Maryland, today the brand is under the umbrella of Pabst. In the bright, primary colors of the 1970s, it’s a simple ad, with a blue background showing the beer glass upside down and the common toast, “Bottom’s Up” as a tagline, also upside down.
Today, Anheuser-Busch InBev is promoting a new holiday focusing on safe and responsible drinking behavior and especially using designated drivers. They’re calling the effort “Global Be(er) Responsible Day.” From the press release:
More than 1,500 Anheuser-Busch employees across the United States won’t be at their desks on Friday, Sept. 23. Instead, they’ll be out visiting bars, restaurants and grocery stores to promote the use of designated drivers.
It’s all part of Global Be(er) Responsible Day, an annual effort organized by Anheuser-Busch and its sister companies around the world.
“For three decades, Budweiser has been leading the way in the promotion of designated drivers,” said Kathy Casso, vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility for Anheuser-Busch. “Our programming to encourage responsible drinking takes place all year long, but on Global Be(er) Responsible Day our employees are making an extra push to spread the message in partnership with wholesalers, retailers and many other partners.”
TAKE THE PLEDGE
Casso and Finger encourage adults to show their friends they care by visiting Budweiser’s Facebook page, clicking on the “Bud DD” tab and pledging their support of designated drivers. Where legal, consumers who take the pledge may be eligible to win a prize from Budweiser.
“The vast majority of adults enjoy our beers responsibly and we have made progress in reducing drunk driving,” Casso said. “So let’s all work together so we can keep moving in the right direction. By visiting Budweiser’s Facebook page and signing up to be a designated driver, you can show you support the important role that designated drivers play in enjoying the great times.”
DESIGNATED DRIVER FACTS
In conjunction with Global Be(er) Responsible Day, new research from GfK Custom Research North America was released showing promising news in the area of designated driver use and awareness, including that 64% of American adults — or 141 million people 21+ — have been a designated driver or have been driven home by one.
The 2011 Designated Driver poll also showed that 86 percent of respondents think that promoting the use of designated drivers is an excellent or good way to help reduce drunk driving. The full survey results are available at alcoholstats.com.
LIFE-SAVING RESEARCH
On Thursday Anheuser-Busch will host in St. Louis a meeting of a working group of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, an independent group of law enforcement experts, at its corporate headquarters. The group recently released a report, Effective Strategies to Reduce Drunk Driving, and will be in St. Louis to continue their research as they search for proven strategies to reduce drunk driving on American roadways.
A lot of progress has been achieved in reducing drunk driving, according to the group’s 2010 report, but experts agree there’s still more work to be done.
TIRF’s ground-breaking research on the nation’s DWI system has been supported by Anheuser-Busch for more than 20 years.
Now sure it’s P.R. designed to show ABI in a positive light, but that doesn’t make it automatically bad. It’s still a good effort and deserves to be acknowledged. In fact, ABI is composed of people who do care is people die driving drunk. ABI is comprised of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, aunt, uncles, etc.; people like you and me. I may not always agree with ABI’s business practices or like a lot of their products, but I’ve known many good people, past and present, who work for A-B, and now ABI. They’re not the monsters that Alcohol Justice (nee the Marin Institute, before they re-branded themselves the new moral sheriff in town) and the other anti-alcohol groups make them out to be.
But you can hear the deafening silence of Alcohol Justice, and the others, applauding ABI’s effort. You’d think the self-styled alcohol “industry watchdog” would be able to praise, as well as criticize. You’d think that’s what an observer would, and should, be able to do. But naturally, their website is completely silent, preferring to communicate only what alcohol companies do wrong, which is everything. I’m convinced they can’t even conceive of ever portraying any alcohol company being praiseworthy for anything. As long as I’ve been watching the watchdogs, they’ve never once said anything positive about any alcohol company.
But the message of driving responsibly and using designated drivers is a good one, and efforts to raise awareness of the issue should be applauded, regardless of where they come from. So I, for one, say good job ABI, for promoting Global Be(er) Responsible Day.
Joey McDaniel created a cool infographic comparing the first Great American Beer Festival in 1982 to this year’s festival. Joey was introduced to craft beer by his wife, Jen, and together they run the beer blog Wet Your Whistles, covering beer in the Bay Area, with an emphasis on the “watering holes along the San Francisco Bay Area Caltrain railway line.” It’s interesting to see how far we’ve come in the 30 years since the first GABF was held. Nice job, Joey.
While I don’t put any stock in astrology, in 1980 Guinness put out a calendar with each month representing one of the zodiac signs, and I thought it would be fun to share these throughout the year.
Libra, the scales, is from September 23-October 23. To learn more, see:
Thursday’s ad is from 1968 and is for Budweiser. The ad copy claims that there were 332 beer brands being sold in 1968. Now that’s “brands,” not breweries, because there weren’t nearly that many different breweries in operation then. According to USBA figures, there were 197 U.S. breweries in 1965, but only 154 in 1970, just five years later. So the number in 1968 would have been somewhere in between that period of time when 43 breweries closed. The ad itself shows quite a number of Budweiser’s competitors at the time, claiming — naturally — that only their beer was “beechwood aged.” I recognize many of the labels shown, though a few — like Dawson and Van Dyke — I’ve never heard of before. Still, you’ve got to be pretty confident in your market share to show your competitors’ labels in your own ad.
Wednesday’s ad is from 1939 and is for Pabst. The slogan claims that “Pabst gets The Call for Keener Refreshment” at the celebrated “21.” But even though everyone is dressed to the nines, the place looks like a dump, celebrated or not. With cheesy Italian tablecloths, bowls of snacks on the tables and rec-room wood paneling — there’s certainly nothing wrong with a bar like that — but tuxedos and fur coats just seem somewhat out of place.
Tuesday’s ad is from 1944 and is for Schlitz. Showing a man wooing a woman by romantically rowing her in a canoe, presumably by moonlight, however there’s no beer in the scene. Wouldn’t he have better luck giving her some Schlitz? Now that’s a social lubricant.
Monday’s ad is from 1964 and is for a Guinness product, their Harp Lager. It uses a curious slogan, “If it’s just something cold and wet you want, drink water.” Since I can’t help but think of Harp as not much more flavorful than water, it doesn’t exactly make me want to rush out and buy some of their beer. But I do love the photograph of the beer beautifully posed on rolling sands.
As today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I thought I’d share this version of the Pirate Alphabet, which seems to be more about beer than piracy.
THE PIRATE ALPHABET
A — The favorite word of Canadian pirates, ey?
B — B stands for Beer!
C — Da ting we sails da boat on
D — Das beer! German pirates
E — ‘e needs a beer
F — ‘f only I had a beer
G — Gee, I wish I had a beer
H — H’aightch and everone one of us should have a beer
I — I wish I had a beer
J — The guy who sells us beer
K — Jay’s wife, she’s a looker!
L — Da place where bad pirates goes when dey dies!
M — ’em folks needs beers
N — ‘nother beer
O — Oh I wish I had a beer
P — (*long pause*) Self-explanatree!
Q — A French word meaning ‘line for beer’
R — A pirate’s favorite word, Arrrh!
S — What you fall on when you drink too much beer
T — Why we beat the British
U — You should have a beer
V — Vikings! Swedish pirates
W — You and you should have a beer
X — Jay’s former wife, she no longer sells us beer
Y — Why not have a beer
Z — Ze beer! French pirates
This week’s work of art is by a Scottish artist, George Harvey, who painted Hop-Picking around 1839. The setting of the painting is believed to be in the Kentish area of England.
You can read a short biography of Harvey at Wikipedia and find links to more of his work at ArtCyclopedia. You can also see a few more of Harvey’s works at the Web Gallery.