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Nipped in the Bud: How the Beer Industry Uses TV Ads to Mollify Critics, Buff Its Image --- Anheuser-Busch Promotes Dogs, Frogs and Sermons On Moderate Drinking --- The `Total Manly Moment'
By Sally Goll Beatty
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

08/14/1997
The Wall Street Journal
A1
(Copyright (c) 1997, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

How is it that beer has such a feel-good image for many Americans, while other "sin products" like tobacco and liquor are more widely condemned? One explanation begins with the dromedary and the dog.

In 1987, RJR Nabisco Inc. rolled out Joe Camel in billboard and magazine ads nationwide. The character became a lightning rod for antitobacco critics, who complained frequently and loudly that the company used him to target kids. But RJR stubbornly clung to Joe Camel for nearly a decade, deciding to phase him out only last month.

Compare that with the modus operandi at Anheuser-Busch Cos. In 1987, the St. Louis beer giant brought Spuds McKenzie, the winsome bull terrier and "original party animal," to national television. The dog was soon beloved by young Budweiser guzzlers -- and by even younger people whose liquid diet is supposed to consist of chocolate milk and apple juice. As kids started showing up at school in Spuds T-shirts, parents and anti-alcohol groups complained. Anheuser-Busch first recast its pooch as a "young executive" promoting responsible drinking. By 1989, though, the Spuds character was put to sleep.

The company says it retired Spuds not because of the controversy, but because the pitch had run its course. Still, "you have to pay attention to what's being said" by critics, says Bob Scarpelli, a senior executive at DDB Needham, the advertising agency that created Spuds. "If you don't, the heat gets hotter."

Actually, Spuds is only part of the story, for Anheuser-Busch has continued to rely on beer-hawking animals. Since the dog's demise, the company has featured ants, alligators, penguins and, until recently, a chorus of frogs whose riveting "Bud-Weis-Er" refrain became a popular staple on the airwaves. And when Anheuser-Busch shunted its frogs aside this year after pressure from critics, the company found another lovable pitchman: Louie the Lizard.

Due in large part to such nimble strategies, the industry remains almost untouchable -- even though surveys show that beer is more widely abused than distilled spirits, and even while the assault on liquor and tobacco intensifies.

The beer industry has nurtured a wholesome image for decades, deftly altering its pitch when an ad campaign comes under fire and financing public-service campaigns preaching moderation. There have been many attempts to restrict beer ads, particularly those on television, yet none of those efforts has gathered any real traction.

In contrast, Seagram Co. tried last year to break the liquor industry's decades-long self-imposed ban on television advertising. But the major networks dug in their heels, keeping ads by Seagram and other companies off the tube in all but a few local markets. Meanwhile, tobacco, which is considered harmful even in small amounts, has been barred from advertising on television since 1971.

To Anheuser-Busch, the reason for the beer industry's good image is simple: "The public understands that beer is different," according to a spokesman. "Beer is the beverage of moderation" and can be part of a "healthy lifestyle."

But beer's ability to distance itself from controversy also underscores the power of advertising to overcome negative statistics and shape public opinion. "Beer is a democratic beverage," says James Crimmins, a senior DDB Needham researcher whose team has interviewed hundreds of drinkers about their attitudes. "It's the beverage of baseball and picnics."

The pitch comes at a time when Americans are drinking less alcohol overall. While total beer consumption declined less than 3% from 1990 to 1995, liquor consumption fell more than 13%, and wine dropped more than 8%, according to industry figures.

Image makers have made beer not only benign, but hip. Just three years ago, Anheuser-Busch was concerned that beer's image was getting stale, with its ads featuring scantily clad young women and gritty blue-collar workers. This was coming at a time that specialty beers and imported brews, which appeal to upscale drinkers, were increasing their market share at the expense of cheaper brands with less cachet.

In 1994, the company fired its ad agency of 79 years -- D'Arcy, Masius, Benton & Bowles, a unit of MacManus Group Inc. of New York -- and handed the Budweiser account to DDB Needham. That agency already had done business with Anheuser-Busch, working wonders in the low-calorie arena with the slogan, "Gimme a light . . . a Bud Light."

DDB Needham, owned by the New York-based Omnicom Group of Cos., sought to woo a younger generation with pitches that look like soft-drink commercials. Out went the hard hats. In came a barrage of edgy, whimsical spots featuring the ants, the frogs and even football-playing Clydesdales.

DDB Needham also sought to create "bar talk," slogans that would get picked up and repeated by the target audience of young men. The agency's most successful slogans became popular-culture rallying cries in their own right.

David Merhar, the ebullient 32-year-old creative executive behind the Bud Light account, had a special knack for developing memorable slogans. His biggest hit drew on an intimate conversation of his own: One day, he says, he just happened to tell his father, "I love you, man." That line became key to a series that began with a father and his two adult sons fishing from a pier -- a scene designed "to pull people in like a Hallmark card," Mr. Merhar says. But this is no Hallmark moment, for after one of the sons, played by Rob Fitzgerald, says, "I love you, man," his dad snaps back: "You're not getting my Bud Light."

The audience loved the campaign, "especially the Charlton Heston one," says Louis Carbone, a 37-year-old gulping down a post-softball Budweiser in a New York City bar. In that spot, Mr. Fitzgerald tells Mr. Heston, "You are so special. That chariot thing you did. . . . I love you, man." But Mr. Heston refuses to give him a beer. Mr. Carbone's interpretation, referring to the actor's role as Moses: "God says Bud is good to drink."

Other young men agree enthusiastically. "I love `I love you, man,'" says Paolo Pagliancolo, 26. "It's a total manly moment." Adds friend Desmond O'Reilly, 30, "I have definitely said `I love you, man' to my friends."

Anheuser-Busch, which spent nearly $300 million on TV ads last year, sought to amplify its spots beyond the air time. The question became, "How can I take an idea that's going to be on paid media and get some extra boost out of it?" says Bob Lachky, a former DDB Needham executive now in charge of brand marketing at Anheuser.

So Anheuser-Busch teed up Mr. Fitzgerald, the actor in the ads, for profiles in People magazine and USA Today. Before long, he was being mobbed by autograph-seekers. And takeoffs of "I love you, man" began popping up regularly in talk shows and comedy routines.

DDB Needham's ads helped slow a drop in full-calorie Budweiser sales and kept Bud Light growing rapidly. Meanwhile, Anheuser-Busch's already whopping market share grew more than a percentage point last year, to 45.4%, while most other major brewers lost ground, according to figures compiled by Beer Marketer's Insights, an industry research group.

Some brewers who stuck to more traditional strategies wound up with lesser results. Miller Brewing, a unit of Philip Morris Cos., has seen its market share slip as it ran ad campaigns featuring themes ranging from sprawling hop fields to a man who, fly undone, fails to impress some women in a bar.

The industry is intent on making beer appear as a benign brew for Everyman -- a strategy that has been in the works for centuries. In the 1700s, some brewers argued that beer was the best defense against drunkenness because of its lower alcohol content. Still, liquor long reigned supreme, for it was less perishable, lighter and easier to transport than beer.

But a wave of German immigrants in the mid-1800s sparked changes in U.S. drinking habits. The Germans introduced their brewing skills here, leading to sharp gains in beer consumption.

Brewers also became expert at offering beer as an antidote to drunkenness. "Budweiser Means Moderation" proclaimed a 1915 Anheuser ad that also featured a giant likeness of George Washington. Beer even became known as "liquid bread," because it contained yeast and was taken with meals. Meanwhile, the Temperance movement, which would eventually lead to Prohibition, focused most of its rhetoric on liquor.

During Prohibition, liquor was the mainstay of the bootlegging industry, as beer was too difficult to hide. The illicit imagery stuck to spirits; even after Prohibition, a cautious liquor industry determined that its best strategy for hanging onto its legal status was to maintain a low profile and keep its ads off the airwaves. Over time, the absence from the tube only seemed to reinforce the idea that liquor didn't belong in the same category with beer.

By the late 1940s and early 1950s, beer was lengthening its lead. Still, there were some concerns that beer's image as a common man's brew was holding back sales. This was the era of the cocktail party, and it was fashionable for hostesses to serve mixed drinks. So brewers took out ads under the slogan "Beer Belongs," featuring families in comfortable suburban surroundings drinking beer from classy Pilsener glassware.

But as beer ads became ubiquitous on televised sports programs, the companies went back to celebrating traditional values of the American male: sports, camaraderie and hard work. In 1979, D'Arcy, Masius, Benton & Bowles unveiled one of Budweiser's longest-running anthems: "This Bud's for you, for being on the job and working hard all day," as lumberjacks, miners and construction workers marched by.

Partly because of such ads, many Americans still believe that a beer packs less punch than a slug of whiskey or gin. But beer accounts for more than 80% of excessive alcohol consumption in the U.S., according to the Alcohol Research Group in Berkeley, Calif., an independent group that gets funding from an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Moreover, studies show many drinkers don't understand that the intoxicating power of a 12-ounce can of beer is equivalent to a five-ounce glass of wine or a mixed drink with 1 1/2 ounces of spirits.

The government's treatment of alcoholic beverages also gives beer a boost. Excise taxes work out to about 13 cents for a standard mixed drink, compared with about five cents for a standard serving of beer or wine. Beer is far more available, especially in supermarkets and convenience stores, where it can be bought seven days a week in many states.

And when teenagers drink alcohol, they are much more likely to choose beer, according to an analysis of a 1993 survey of 30,000 households by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. More than 59% of the males 12 to 20 years old who drank alcohol said beer was their alcoholic beverage of choice, while 9.1% cited liquor.

An Anheuser-Busch spokesman says that for underage drinkers, "the only acceptable percentage is zero" and that the company has taken steps to help bartenders and clerks spot fake IDs used by teenagers. Anheuser-Busch also frequently runs public-service ads cautioning drinkers to "know when to say when."

Still, there is a "strategic ambiguity" in promotional spots urging moderation, says Charles Atkin, a communications professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing who has published studies on alcohol ads. He says the spots mean widely different things to different people: "College students think it's five that's the moderate number" of drinks, while adults believe moderate "means two or three" and legislators think, "what a nice thing for these beer companies to do." An Anheuser-Busch spokesman responds that its ads are "specifically designed to encourage adults who choose to drink to exercise personal judgment."

Clearly, no advertising strategy lasts forever, and Anheuser-Busch is always adjusting its pitch. It is now rolling out ads with its chairman and chief executive, August Busch III, on a bar stool, talking of his family's struggles to keep the business afloat during Prohibition. He tells how Clydesdales delivered the first legal, post-Prohibition case of Budweiser -- to Franklin Roosevelt's White House.

Such heritage spots won't be the last word. As a Budweiser lizard says in a recent ad, "Frogs sell beer. That's it, man -- the No. 1 rule of marketing."