That Bud Ad Still Getting Attention

Feb. 6, 2015 – We’re not talking about the lost-puppy-rescued-by-Clydesdales ad but the one that was sort of anti craft brewed beers.  We thought it was just us, but it turns out a lot of other people found it curious, too.

The ad talks about Budweiser as “not brewed to be fussed over” and goes on to say, “let them sip their pumpkin peach ale”.  The reason it is so odd is that Budweiser has been busily buying up craft breweries. We recently wrote about the purchase of 10 Barrels Brewing in Oregon in December.  Since then they’ve bought Elysian Brewing in Seattle, which just happens to make Gourdgia on my Mind Pecan Peach Pumpkin Amber.  One of Elysian’s co-founders, Dick Cantwell, was not amused when he saw the ad.  He was against the sale to Anheuser-Busch InBev and the crack about pumpkin peach ale rubbed salt in the wound.  He told the Chicago Tribune “I find it kind of incredible that ABI would be so tone-deaf as to pretty directly (even if unwittingly) call out one of the breweries they have recently acquired, even as that brewery is dealing with the anger of the beer community in reaction to the sale.”

In all Budweiser parent, Anheuser-Busch InBev, owns or has a percentage of Goose Island (Chicago), Blue Point (Long Island, N.Y.) and 10 Barrel (Bend, OR), Widmer Brothers Brewing (Portland, OR), Grass Valley Brewing (Fairfield, CA) and the above-mentioned Elysian Brewing.

It was an odd slap down of one of the company’s growing divisions.  Does management of regular Bud not talk to the craft brewing division?  Or because craft beer aficionados despise Budweiser, do they think Budweiser drinkers despise craft beer?  Perhaps they have market research that shows its regular customers consider craft brews as lah-de-dah and therefore mockable and the pitch was to keep them in the fold.

Non-communication between departments is common in huge corporations.  While it struck us as odd, there was nothing sinister or even particularly clever about the ad.  It was simply an attempt to shore up a slipping brand, which still sells 16 million barrels of beer a year.  It didn’t win back a single craft beer devotee and it probably didn’t drive any of Bud’s regular drinkers away.  But it gave the down-in-the-weeds bloggers something to write about.  Thank you, Bud!