Making Love in a Canoe
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Bud Light sales might never recover, given that retailers are now making smaller footprints for Bud Light and giving the old space to competitors (some of which might not be owned by AB InBev).
I mean, don’t cry for AB InBev, their stock went up despite the Bud Light boycott due to growth outside of the US and Molson Coors stock went *DOWN* despite picking up much of Bud Light’s old market share.
That global economy, man.
Anyway, I’ve spent the last few months boggling at the boycott of Bud Light and seeing arguments over it and realizing that, hey…I am not sure that I even know what Bud Light tastes like. I think that the last time I had one was 1991 (but I *MIGHT* have had one in 2015 or 2016, while in Qatar… it was Bud or Bud Light and I was surprised to find that it tasted like a pleasant wheat soda).
Well, I went grocery shopping and saw that there was a sale of sorts. I wanted to do a “make your own six-pack” thing but the only option for that were pinky-extended bottles of beer. What was available were “BUY 2 FOR $5” cans of beer and “BUY 2 for $7” cans of beer.
$12.
Now, the *RIGHT* way to do this would be to wait for Maribou to come home and then invite Fish over and tell him that I needed him to be one of the two blinds in a double-blind experiment and I’d make him a steak for his trouble. But then I said, “heck with it”.
Busch and Keystone were 2 for $5. Bud Light and Coors Light were 2 for $7. I got a box of Cheez-its for palate cleansing.
So let’s try this out.
Keystone came out in 1989 and I remember that my chemistry professor in 1991 made fun of it during our section on alcohols. Isopropyl, ethyl, and methyl. After introducing methyl, he said “that’s what they use to make Keystone”. Big laugh.
Let’s give it a sniff. Okay. It doesn’t smell particularly bad. Give it a taste… It doesn’t taste particularly bad either.
I mean, I’m a wino. I don’t usually drink beer and, when I do, I usually drink something that they used to call “microbrews”. 1554 or Fat Tire or Anchor Steam or something like that.
Keystone? Well, it tastes like light beer.
But let’s compare it with something else. A couple of Cheez-its and…
The only thing I know about Busch is that there were a bunch of radio commercials in the mid-80’s on the rock station that bragged about how Busch was sharing artists of note and they played a jingle written by Taj Mahal. Looks like he released an album in 1977 and then his next album was released in 1987 so I guess that that’s when they were playing the jingle.
A little less sweet, I guess. A little more sour. A little more citrus. I mean, not a *LOT*. But Keystone Light didn’t have any citrusy notes and Busch Light does.
I don’t know that it’s to the benefit of Busch Light, but it is there.
Some more Cheez-its and let’s go to our hometown favorite: Coors Light. Fresh and crisp as a mountain stream, I’m told.
Okay. There’s a little bit of apple there. It’s like a light beer that had an apple cider sneeze in the room while it was being canned. Like a light beer mixed with an apple cider hard seltzer.
And, finally, the beer that caused all of this hubbub: Bud Light.
Yep. A sweet wheat soda with a hint of an apple note. I’m not sure I could tell the difference between Bud Light and Coors Light.
I mean, if I were going to rank them, I’d probably rank them
4. Busch Light
(a bit of a space here)
3. Keystone Light
(very little space here)
1/2. Coors Light and Bud Light (tie)
I am not going to stop being a wino and I am definitely *NOT* going to finish these cans. I’m not going to make a joke about them being gross or anything like that (like I expected that I would at this point in the evening) but I am certainly going to pour three of them down the sink. Yes, I will finish the fourth.
But there isn’t a whole lot of difference between them. If one of them was my favorite beer in the world and I learned that the marketing exec gave a speech about how Jaybird sucks and how they were looking for more customers like Cool People instead of Dorks like Jaybird, it would be very easy for me to switch from one beer to another. Indeed, I can’t tell the difference between Bud Light and Coors Light.
I mean, you know the people who give short speeches about how they can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi and yes it matters? Well, I tend to prefer Pepsi (Coke is sharper and more acidic, Pepsi is rounder and sweeter) but it’s downright trivial for me to jump between this one or that one if I happen to find myself at a restaurant that serves the one but not the other.
This would be downright simple compared to that.
I have broadly similar tastes as you in this area, and so I found this quite informative — thank you for your sacrifice.Report
One point I wanted to make was that they weren’t *BAD*. They just weren’t particularly good.
If I were out at a picnic and had a full plate and this is what they had in the cooler? Walking distance from the house? Yeah, I could see having a couple with a plate full of food. Heck, if it were a particularly hot day, I might not even bother telling anyone who would listen that I prefer wine or *GOOD* beer.
But there’s nothing there that calls to me and tells me “you should get a sixer of that for the weekend!”Report
It’s all party beer. AKA what you buy en mass for a tailgate so people can walk into a stadium with a buzz (or more), not get hints of chocolate or orange or what have you.Report
If that’s true, then I completely and totally drank these wrong.
But that gives me an idea for an ad campaign:
“We know how to Tailgate”. A guy making brats on a grill and laughing and holding a beer. A lady playing cornhole and laughing and holding a beer. Three guys doing the side by side lineup thing and bouncing and laughing and the two guys on either end are holding a beer.
Open the gate to the stadium. “GAME ON”.
WHICH IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN HAVING AN INFLUENCER DRINKING A BEER IN A BATHTUB TALKING ABOUT THE BEERReport
Pretty much.Report
I have a weird partiality to Busch Light. It was always the cheapest at the liquor store we used to go to in college a little ways into the ‘hood, where things like checking ID wasn’t something they were really into. I’m sure I’ve drank gallons of it, but it’s been at least a decade since I cracked one.Report
There’s an apocryphal story in the wine biz that the reason Merlot took off in the 90s was because it was easier to say than Cabernet Sauvignon… this was before we’d all become pals with wine and called it Cab. We ruined an entire varietal over linguistic temerity. Side note, a few years back I had a Pahlmeyer Merlot (2006) and it was one of the best wines I’ve ever had… made me realize what people probably had access to in 1990 and decided… Hey, this Merlot shit is pretty good – like a cloud of blueberries and chocolate. Then they planted it everywhere and made it taste like tomato leaves and tin.
Anyhow… my faulty recollection of Lite beers from the 80s – 90s is that they went from being, I dunno, a category, like Light beer from Miller to being a brand: Miller Lite, then Bud Lite, then… it made grabbing the Lite beer a sort of adjacent to your favorite brand rather than a different choice. It was still Bud, just BudLite. Now, I don’t know how Natty Boh became the beer of choice for our South Carolina roommate who had an ID, but he who has the ID drives the flavor bus… so Natty Boh was the beer of choice for our slice of Notre Dame – and they didn’t have a Lite version.Report
That dang movie “Sideways” wrecked Merlots for a good long while there.
Suited me fine, the prices went down. I do think that the people who looked at the main character and said “you know what? He’s right!” were missing the point of the movie but nobody remembers the point of the movie or even the plot. They only remember the “I AM NOT DRINKING ANY MERLOT” rant.
And so Pinot Noir sales went up 16% and everybody was drinking wines that even the movie’s main character admitted that most of them were disappointing but the absolute best ones are better than anything else.
Contrast against Merlots where pretty much all of them (to that point) were a solid B+.
I mean, it’s only the first glass that has to taste good anyway.Report
Eat, Pray, Love for men. Terrible movie.
But, he’s absolutely right about Pinot… most are middling and have an easier path to failure, but the best Pinot is miles better than the best Cab. Unfortunately, there are very few inefficiencies in the Pinot market to exploit. Mostly traps.Report
Anchor Steam has ceased production, possibly gone for good.
https://sf.eater.com/2023/7/31/23814440/anchor-brewing-shutting-down-steam-beer-sapporoReport
Ah, bummer. They were good with pizza, back in the mid-90s.Report
I don’t remember which of the lite beer campaigns it was, but one of them paved the way for wacky commercials that have nothing to do with the product. Every time you want to punch a gecko, these guys are the reason.Report
The Miller Lite ads with the athletes? Those were awesome.
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I wonder what qualifies as the first sufficiently “wacky” beer commercial.
I found a Hamm’s commercial where a guy was driving his jeep through the mountains with a bear, but I don’t think that that was trying to be goofy as much as trying to capitalize on the popularity of Grizzly Adams.
This one has Spike Jones:
I mean, “goofy” is relative but you don’t get much goofier in 1961 than Spike Jones.
Digging around for the first “modern” goofy commercial, I found this one and my jaw dropped and I assure you, I shook my head in disapproval:
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My favorite goofy beer ad.
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The 80’s had absolutely *EPIC* commercials starring not just athletes but approximately ONE BAJILLION celebrities and while Miller Lite was not among the beers tasted, I cannot imagine it’s more than 5% outside of the established bands of the 4 that I did try and, lemme tell ya, the advertising budgets for beer are 100% justified given that if these beers had to get by on merit alone, they’d make about a buck and a half.
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We drank Keystone as poor Airmen because it was cheaper than Coors/Bud Light. These days, however, I’m of the opinion that anything which makes less room for weak, watery (sex in a canoe) American lagers and more room for beers with actual body and flavor is a net good.Report
Keystone happened to have some of the best commercials. The “bitter beer face”? That’s comedy gold!
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I drank Coors Lite in college….everybody was, so….but when someone asked me prior to a beer run what I wanted, I always got a Belgium beer six pack, knowing that after six of those, I would not care what any beer afterward tasted like, assuming I could taste it. Later my dad did some homebrew–did not like. When I went to England and Scotland in my 30s I started drinking scotch, and now have moved to bourbon. Figure it’s been decades since I drank any form of beer.Report
I remember the story my local college booze shoppe owner told me. I would usually buy wine for myself but, sometimes, I’d pick up a bomber of something for Maribou. Something that looked like it had a lot of hops or fruity notes or something. I made a joke once about “making love in a canoe” and he told me that he went fishing with a group of guys every summer and, last year, one of them pulled him aside and asked him to just bring Bud Light. He didn’t want to deal with complicated beer while he was fishing. He didn’t want to taste the subtle nutty or floral notes. He just wanted to have a beer he didn’t have to think about while out there on the boat.
Our local free weekly rag used to have a column dedicated to marijuana reviews and the guy would go on and on and on with positively purple prose. Here’s an example:
I realize, now, that the people who talk about wine sound like this. The people who talk about beer sound like this.
*I* sound like this.
So I have more appreciation of light beer than I had 10 or 15 years ago.
But I’m still going to prefer wine.Report
I drank Coors Lite in college….everybody was, so….
One of the small simple pleasures of getting out of grad school and taking a real job was being able to afford much better beer…Report
And who can forget this classic, and the reaction?
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-e&q=miller+lite+catfight+commercial#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:0d8f6f95,vid:Q2Uf7gXduLkReport
“We can’t do this anymore.”
“What if we only *KIND OF* do it and acknowledge that it’s bad?”Report
People are always saying things like that. “We couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today.” A lot of people thought they couldn’t make them then. Until they did.Report
Well, this is what we’ve got in the current year:
Maybe we’ll get funny commercials again next year. Tastefully funny, of course.Report
I grew up in the beer business. Beer companies have been making commercials like this forever.Report
True enough.
But I’m also willing to say that we will never again have ones as brilliant as this:
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When I was a kid, I lived in a Miller Lite household. One time my dad let me have a sip when I brought him a can. I’m not sure whether this was good or bad parenting, but the result was that I decided that that was enough beer for me. Now I live in a water household.Report
I love a god craft beer. I have homebrewed in the past, and I did some pretty ambitious stuff, I think. It was well received by my friends. Just establishing my bona fides as an amateur who knows beer, probably better than the average consumer.
I am not a beer snob, in that there is absolutely a place and time for these type of cheap American lagers. Some in the comment section have already noted that. Tailgating before a football game on a hot September Saturday in SEC country? You don’t want a thick juicy IPA or a sour or a stout. You want something light and crisp and refreshing that gets the job done. After mowing your grass. At a summer cookout. At a large family gathering. On the beach. At a fish fry. At a crawfish boil. On the lake. Tons of times that I would rather have a Miller Lite than the craft beee I would otherwise drink on your average Friday night.
That being said, this reveals why Bud Light’s marketing decision here was so stupid. Most/many of those settings have a particular stereotypical market in mind. Bud forgot their target audience. In fact, if you believe what their since-fired marketing person said, she didn’t want that target audience. She wanted a new clientele, without giving any thought to whether that new audience would adopt the product in sufficient quantities to make up for the group she didn’t want to sell to any more. And from a business standpoint, that strategy is just… baffling.
I don’t particularly care, because I prefer Miller lite anyway.Report
I was golfing with my son last weekend and he bought a can of what is surely America’s worst beer: Michelob Ultra. Up until then I’d never had one with no beer flavor, but I can cross that experience off the list now.
In a world where Pilsener beer exists, citing light and refreshing as a reason for drinking light beer is just a bad excuse for saying you prefer diet beer.Report
I did a Pepsi challenge once with my own homebrew, a purportedly decent craft brew, and a Natty Lite. I correctly identified my own beer, but confused the craft beer with the Natty.
My then-girlfriend tried another Natty Lite product that was the color of Hawaiian Punch. Called it too sweet to finish. Afterwards she reported “I… I don’t feel so good.”Report