Anheuser Busch and their deceptive marketing

[Drookit]

I guess if one wanted to be really arguementative, one could say clone kits "hurt" the craft brew industry too, right?

 

[bob1852]

I guess if one wanted to be really arguementative, one could say clone kits "hurt" the craft brew industry too, right?

Those "friendly" craft brewers at Bell's sent a cease and desist to a homebrew store for marketing a "Three Hearted Ale" recipe kit.

I don't buy the whole "craft brewers are so friendly to homebrewers" argument. Like anything, some are, some aren't.

I've probably e-mailed 15 craft breweries asking for clone recipe advice. Russian River is the only one that has been helpful. The others have said things like "our recipes are proprietary and we need to keep it that way to stay competitive" or "our brewers are really busy and can't help." Not exactly the friendliest...

 

[bobbrewedit]

Off topic, deleted.

 

[Revvy]

Those "friendly" craft brewers at Bell's sent a cease and desist to a homebrew store for marketing a "Three Hearted Ale" recipe kit.

I don't buy the whole "craft brewers are so friendly to homebrewers" argument. Like anything, some are, some aren't.

I've probably e-mailed 15 craft breweries asking for clone recipe advice. Russian River is the only one that has been helpful. The others have said things like "our recipes are proprietary and we need to keep it that way to stay competitive" or "our brewers are really busy and can't help." Not exactly the friendliest...

Not to mention that among the employee incentives for AHB-Inbev, is a homebrewing Club. They actually have an amazing amount of support systems and internal organizations for their employees, including a large company wide homebrewing club. One of their members was on here for awhile. AHB was actually giving hops and other stuff to the club, and to homebrewers in the ST Louis area..

It's on the employee resources page.

They call them ERGs, Employee Resource Group

Great People Make a Company Great

Home » Our Company » Our People » Employee Resource Groups

To further our commitment to diversity and support the company’s business objectives, we have established Anheuser-Busch Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). The ERGs provide education, awareness, and professional growth and development opportunities for employees. The groups are:

Creating Real Opportunities for Women’s Networking (CROWN) – Women’s ERG
Hispanic and Latino (HoLa) – Hispanic and Latino ERG
Black Leaders Achieving Diversity through Engagement (BLADE) – African American ERG
Asian Pacific Islander (PAC-ASIA) – Asian and Pacific Islander ERG
Employee Alliance Group of Leadership and Engagement (EAGLE) – gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and friends ERG
Community Action Project (CAP) – Community Service ERG
BUD employees Supporting Armed forces & Veterans Everywhere (BUDSAVE) – military support ERG
Home Brewers ERG

There's a discussion about their club here....

 

[Nightshade]

Deleted, not going to continue this OT convo

 

[g-love]

Not to mention that among the employee incentives for AHB-Inbev, is a homebrewing Club.

That's awesome (seriously)! What a cool incentive. I'm guessing I couldn't convince the local public school system I work for to hook us up with one of those. Hahaha

 

[Phunhog]

The other thing is that I wouldn't doubt that many of us actually "own" In-Bev-AHB!! If you check your pension funds/mutual funds you would be surprised where your money is invested.

 

[JimRausch]

Yay! Finally got to the end of this thread! Started on p.1 over an hour ago.....

 

[cfrazier77]

Not to mention that among the employee incentives for AHB-Inbev, is a homebrewing Club. They actually have an amazing amount of support systems and internal organizations for their employees, including a large company wide homebrewing club. One of their members was on here for awhile. AHB was actually giving hops and other stuff to the club, and to homebrewers in the ST Louis area..

It's on the employee resources page.

They call them ERGs, Employee Resource Group



There's a discussion about their club here....

Revvy,
I totally forgot about this. I am on the other side of the river from St. Louis and this club is pretty good. Every year AB gives out, wait for it, FREE whole hops to homebrewers. :rockin: Come and get noble hops by the trash bag.

This must be an obvious ploy to attack and attack and subvert the homebrew movement.

 

[Revvy]

Revvy,
I totally forgot about this. I am on the other side of the river from St. Louis and this club is pretty good. Every year AB gives out, wait for it, FREE whole hops to homebrewers. :rockin: Come and get noble hops by the trash bag.

This must be an obvious ploy to attack and attack and subvert the homebrew movement.

Yeah, I think I first heard about it from you. Yup, they hate homebrewers alright.

 

[thadius856]

Are Star Wars analogies the new Godwin's Law? It's not too far of a stretch to see the analogy being Germans and the Nazi party.

Sure. Use that analogy if you prefer. It would still serve to point out the same logical flaw in the argument, if not a bit cliche.

 

[phandaal]

As long as "BMC" is competing with other companies -- regardless of size -- by trying to put out a product that people actually want, then good on them. Nobody's making me or anyone else buy their beer if we don't want to buy it. It's a limited market. Even the staunchest beer drinker can only consume and/or afford so much beer, and people will buy what they like. Do you hate on romance novels because they've got a larger market share than Dostoyevsky? Lighten up.

How about instead of hating on bud light, offer some positive reasons for why people should try a different product. People generally respond to positives much more readily than they respond to negatives.

 

[McMalty]

As long as "BMC" is competing with other companies -- regardless of size -- by trying to put out a product that people actually want, then good on them. Nobody's making me or anyone else buy their beer if we don't want to buy it. It's a limited market. Even the staunchest beer drinker can only consume and/or afford so much beer, and people will buy what they like. Do you hate on romance novels because they've got a larger market share than Dostoyevsky? Lighten up.

How about instead of hating on bud light, offer some positive reasons for why people should try a different product. People generally respond to positives much more readily than they respond to negatives.

Who r u talking to? It sounds like ur responding to something specific but u don't quote it. Just wondering if u had a specific qualm

 

[Teromous]

Maaaan, you should have taken that beer and thrown it on the ground. You can't trust the system.
[ame]http://youtu.be/gAYL5H46QnQ[/ame]

 

[Cathedral]

Well, you know what they say:

If you're not a rebel by the time you're twenty, you've got no heart; if you don't join the establishment by the time you're thirty, you've got no brains.

 

[phandaal]

Who r u talking to? It sounds like ur responding to something specific but u don't quote it. Just wondering if u had a specific qualm

I'm talking to you, the OP.

Edit: I'm not trying to start an interwebz fight. And anyhow, what I wrote seems to be a common theme regarding AB.

 

[McMalty]

I'm talking to you, the OP.

Edit: I'm not trying to start an interwebz fight. And anyhow, what I wrote seems to be a common theme regarding AB.

yes, don't want an argument either, but I didn't say anything about bud light, as you stated. Nor did i state or suggest that you or anyone else besides myself not drink AB products. So your whole posting was confusing to me. To beat a dead horse to death and then beat its family to death, my problem isn't with AB products (altho i don't like most of them), it's with the marketing of AB and specifically the AB's rep statement to me. That was the whole point of my original post.

 

[iambeer]

Just want to say that Budweiser is the most delicious beer, if you like that sort of thing, and turning down free beer that made by grandmaster brewers in super duper brewing systems is not logical. Even 1.5 ounces of it in a tiny plastic cup--it doesn't mean you are selling your soul with every disgusting swallow of the yellowish stuff. Even if they are telling you lies so that you will buy a bottle of beer from them. Laugh wholeheartedly and the world will laugh with you. Cry and the tiny minority of discriminate beer drinkers will tell you to be quiet because you are disturbing their happy place.

Can't we just all be friends and send this thread to the debate club which I have no access to?

 

[iaefebs]

Well, you know what they say:

If you're not a rebel by the time you're twenty, you've got no heart; if you don't join the establishment by the time you're thirty, you've got no brains.

Flip flopper. Rebel all your life. Age 60 and still a rebel. I think this way... If you're not a rebel by the time your 20 you've got no brains, if you join the establishment at 30 you've got no heart.

 

[CoalCreekBeer]

I have to agree with the OP, I could care less about how bad BMC beers taste to me. My biggest beef is their business practices. They buy up breweries that they thought they could make a buck on, alter recipes for the highest profit margin possible, shut down the original breweries, and mass produce them from huge hub breweries. Then they have the sly marketing team put crap on their labels that make you think you drinking something you are not.

Rolling Rock is a great example of this, one, the recipe tastes nothing like the original, but then on the label they say "To Honor the Tradition of this great brand we quote from the original pledge of quality......From the Glass Lined Tanks of Old Latrobe We Tender...etc etc.. If you look at the label, at first glance you see "From the Glass Lined Tanks of Old Latrobe" in nice big bold letters. The crap about honoring the tradition is a nice small print. Oh, and in case you didn't know, Rolling Rock is not brewed at the Latrobe Brewery anymore, and is not brewed in glass lined tanks and the recipe isn't used either, they just bought the rights to the name and dumped whatever crap they wanted into the bottles.

Rolling Rock is just 1 example of hundreds. All of my old staples have been bought up and destroyed, Bass, New Castle, Boddington's, Tetley's. These were once good beers that have been bought up by these massive companies, then systematically destroyed in order to make them "more Profitable". I have nothing against making money or profits, but when you buy something and destroy it, and then try to sell it as the same thing when it clearly is not is just wrong.

In my opinion thinking that these huge companies supports you as a home brewer, or supports the craft beer industry is just foolish. They see you either as a dollar sign, or competition that needs to be destroyed. Don't be fooled by their marketing into thinking they are your friend, they have a marketing budget just for that.

 

[RachmaelBenApplebaum]

As a funny little bit of history, I'll throw my hat into the ring. I have in my possession a pamphlet from the Coors Brewery tour circa 1975 (76?). It talks about their superior product etc. but one of the funnier elements is that at one time it was only available in Colorado, and then later when the pamphlet itself was written it showed a cartoony little map where you could find Coors and where they distributed. Funnily enough it was almost impossible to find east of the rocky mountains and they even cautioned consumers not to buy their product in eastern states because it was likely bootlegged or counterfeit and thus inferior. So really, Coors was a little guy way back when that TONS of people really really liked, even going so far as bootlegging the stuff, and then capitalism took hold (and president Gerald Ford, a HUGE fan of Coors) and BAM, multi-national conglomerate. It's a pretty funny little piece of history and it lovingly shares the shelf next to my other rare-print items, like my 1962 CDC workbook for children educating them and their families about how to react in the event of a nuclear war (some of the shelter diagrams are laughably unrealistic, think particle board lean-to covered in 3-4inches of dirt against a house).

Now I have a choice to make after this delightful little vignette into history, wait a really long time for my homebrew to get cold in the fridge since all the cold ones got consumed, or have a nice, ice-cold Banquet beer right now?

 

[brewingmeister]

Hey now, bootlegging coors is ok as long as you have a sweet trans am running blocker.

 

[bob1852]

I have to agree with the OP, I could care less about how bad BMC beers taste to me. My biggest beef is their business practices. They buy up breweries that they thought they could make a buck on, alter recipes for the highest profit margin possible, shut down the original breweries, and mass produce them from huge hub breweries. Then they have the sly marketing team put crap on their labels that make you think you drinking something you are not.

Rolling Rock is a great example of this, one, the recipe tastes nothing like the original, but then on the label they say "To Honor the Tradition of this great brand we quote from the original pledge of quality......From the Glass Lined Tanks of Old Latrobe We Tender...etc etc.. If you look at the label, at first glance you see "From the Glass Lined Tanks of Old Latrobe" in nice big bold letters. The crap about honoring the tradition is a nice small print. Oh, and in case you didn't know, Rolling Rock is not brewed at the Latrobe Brewery anymore, and is not brewed in glass lined tanks and the recipe isn't used either, they just bought the rights to the name and dumped whatever crap they wanted into the bottles.

Rolling Rock is just 1 example of hundreds. All of my old staples have been bought up and destroyed, Bass, New Castle, Boddington's, Tetley's. These were once good beers that have been bought up by these massive companies, then systematically destroyed in order to make them "more Profitable". I have nothing against making money or profits, but when you buy something and destroy it, and then try to sell it as the same thing when it clearly is not is just wrong.

In my opinion thinking that these huge companies supports you as a home brewer, or supports the craft beer industry is just foolish. They see you either as a dollar sign, or competition that needs to be destroyed. Don't be fooled by their marketing into thinking they are your friend, they have a marketing budget just for that.

Stone IPA and many craft breweries I've been to in Colorado taste a lot different than it did a few years ago. It's not just the big boys that alter recipes for various reasons (costs, ingredient variability, etc.) but still label them under the same name.

Yet, Bud Light always tastes the exact same.....

 

[Brewskii]

... I like Bass

 

[kombat]

my problem [is] with the marketing of AB and specifically the AB's rep statement to me. That was the whole point of my original post.

I'm still trying to figure out what was wrong with his statement, and how it was "deceptive." You yourself conceded that what he said was true ... in your very first post!

He says, "no, actually we're in alliance with [craft breweries]". So I said "no you're not". he says "yes, actually we're in alliance with CBA (Craft Brew Allinace)".........which is true

*Insert incredulous smilyface here*

So what's the problem, McMalty? Why are you so furious if you're cool with their beer, and you admitted that what he said was in fact true?

 

[GrogNerd]

I'm still trying to figure out what was wrong with his statement, and how it was "deceptive." You yourself conceded that what he said was true ... in your very first post!



*Insert incredulous smilyface here*

So what's the problem, McMalty? Why are you so furious if you're cool with their beer, and you admitted that what he said was in fact true?

he's FURIOUS because when told "no, i don't support Anheuser Busch products" the rep had the audacity, the NERVE! the how-DARE-YOU! to ask, "why?"

 

[kombat]

Rolling Rock is a great example of this, one, the recipe tastes nothing like the original, but then on the label they say "To Honor the Tradition of this great brand we quote from the original pledge of quality......From the Glass Lined Tanks of Old Latrobe We Tender...etc etc.. If you look at the label, at first glance you see "From the Glass Lined Tanks of Old Latrobe" in nice big bold letters. The crap about honoring the tradition is a nice small print. Oh, and in case you didn't know, Rolling Rock is not brewed at the Latrobe Brewery anymore, and is not brewed in glass lined tanks and the recipe isn't used either, they just bought the rights to the name and dumped whatever crap they wanted into the bottles.

Wow, I had no idea beer tasted better when it was brewed in glass-lined tanks.

What's that? It doesn't?

Then who the heck cares?

Look, I've said it before earlier in this thread and I'll say it again: If they thought that changing the recipe would reduce sales, then why would they do it? It just doesn't make any sense! Just to be evil? Because they hate craft beer more than they love profit? Come on, gimmie a break.

If they changed the beer and kept it, then it's because it's selling better. Period. If you don't like the "new" formulation, then take it up with the unsophisticated lemmings buying the watered-down swill, not the company catering to the tastes of the biggest possible audience.

 

[phandaal]

Rolling Rock is just 1 example of hundreds. All of my old staples have been bought up and destroyed, Bass, New Castle, Boddington's, Tetley's. These were once good beers that have been bought up by these massive companies, then systematically destroyed in order to make them "more Profitable". I have nothing against making money or profits, but when you buy something and destroy it, and then try to sell it as the same thing when it clearly is not is just wrong.

It always sucks to see your old favorites changed in ways that you find unacceptable. That's why we have so many "I love the [insert decade here]" shows on television.

Thing is, these breweries are just as much part of the sale as the company that buys them. I'm willing to bet they made the transaction voluntarily, not at the point of the gun, because it made sense to them at the time.

The big companies, for their part, are trying to acquire something that people want to buy. They know that some people aren't looking for "BMC" and so they legally acquire the right to brew and sell a different beer under another established brand.

All of this assumes a totally voluntary playing field... if one side is getting preferential treatment in law, that would change the discussion significantly.

 

[CoalCreekBeer]

It is really amazing to me that home brewers, or Beer snobs can actually defend the practices of BMC. We are becoming so close to a Dualopoly in this country where beer is concerned. If InBev purchases Modelo they will own 52% of the beer market, add in MillerCoors, and there is 80% of the beer market controlled by 2 corporations. Pray that the DOJ stops the deal, since it violates Anti trust laws. But just as we have seen in the banking industry, once you get so big, nobody can prosecute you. When you control the market the rules no longer apply to you.

Yea, sure BMC beers always taste the same, but make no mistake, it is all about greed. Defending these guys, to me is akin to the poor and the middle class in the country defending the top 1%, by screaming about class warfare, and "punishing success". You are playing into the hands of those who are taking advantage of you. Thank the Gods there is such a big craft beer boom going on in this country, or we would be back to living in a world full of flavorless uninteresting beer. I assure you that BMC would love to go back to 1980 when this country only had 82 active breweries, as opposed to the 2,100+ that we have today.

 

[ericbw]

It is really amazing to me that home brewers, or Beer snobs can actually defend the practices of BMC. We are becoming so close to a Dualopoly in this country where beer is concerned. If InBev purchases Modelo they will own 52% of the beer market, add in MillerCoors, and there is 80% of the beer market controlled by 2 corporations. Pray that the DOJ stops the deal, since it violates Anti trust laws. But just as we have seen in the banking industry, once you get so big, nobody can prosecute you. When you control the market the rules no longer apply to you.

Yea, sure BMC beers always taste the same, but make no mistake, it is all about greed. Defending these guys, to me is akin to the poor and the middle class in the country defending the top 1%, by screaming about class warfare, and "punishing success". You are playing into the hands of those who are taking advantage of you. Thank the Gods there is such a big craft beer boom going on in this country, or we would be back to living in a world full of flavorless uninteresting beer. I assure you that BMC would love to go back to 1980 when this country only had 82 active breweries, as opposed to the 2,100+ that we have today.

A) Will SOMEONE please tell me how these companies are "taking advantage" of anyone?

B) AGAIN, as has been mentioned, the fact that there are now 2100+ breweries seems to indicate that their evil plan to destroy something isn't working. If anything, it might well be growing the market, which means that anyone who has any share in the market ends up with a slice of a bigger pie.

C) If it comes down to some philosophical notion that big companies are always bad/wrong, well, that's lame. And I suspect that is the main point of most of these arguments.

D) People who drink certain popular beers aren't "lemmings," anymore than people who refuse to drink them or only drink local or only drink small or whatever are lemmings of a different color. There are people who genuinely like those products, and those who don't. And people who like all of them.

E) I'm glad someone mentioned the days when Coors was regional. It was probably in the 80s when it showed up in the East. (Of all the light beers, Coors is the one that I would probably pass on most of the time, except in cases of extreme thirst. The Banquet or Original, though, that's good stuff.)

It's really a more complex issue than it seems. The OP has taken a lot of crap, but he DID say that he could have destroyed the rep in front of everyone.