Energy Beers
Regular readers of this blog know that two of our "side" interests are advertising and beer. We, accordingly, found this analysis of "malternatives" and their marketing interesting. Excerpts:
The core malternatives - Smirnoff Ice, Mike's Hard, Bacardi Silver, and the much-maligned pioneer, Zima - are showing double-digit drops on the last annual numbers, anywhere from 16 to 46% down from the previous year's sales. The broad swath of imitators is also down.
The pattern seems to be a familiar one. An innovative new brand comes along and catches fire due to its novelty and smart promotion. Imitators (or re-positioned precursors, like Zima and Two Dogs) spring up and ride the wave. But the hot trend dies of its own hotness as trend-setters look for the next new thing and somewhere, some priest of heat denounces the trend as over, and why did anyone ever think that was cool? The trend declines swiftly, and wholesalers are left with aging pallets of the last new thing. . .
Like them or not, "energy beers" seem to be innovative, and they are the third "next big thing" to hit the beer market in six years. Beers like Sparks, Moonshot and Anheuser-Busch's new B-to-the-E are beers laced with legal stimulants. Spurred by the popularity of Red Bull and vodka cocktails, these beers are going head-to-head with that idea.
It's not that new an idea. The fellow who taught me bartending back in the early 198Os drank coffee with a slug of Old Grand-Dad: "Catch the buzz, stay awake to enjoy it," he always used to say.
These are not the first caffeinated mainstream beers, either. Iguana Light was a Miller product brought out in the mid-'9Os, flavored with the Brazilian guarana berry, a berry with twice the caffeine of coffee beans and a sly, sideways reputation as an aphrodisiac. Iguana Light was not a success in test markets (so much so that it became a case study in marketing failure), perhaps due to the guarana flavor or perhaps the mindless "I Wanna Iguana" slogan, and it was discontinued. There have also been a number of coffee beers in the craft segment, none of which ever reached a serious niche in sales. And there was "Buzz Beer", a mythical caffeinated beer that comedian Drew Carey made in his garage microbrewery on "The Drew Carey Show".
But a wave of them have hit the market in the past year. B-to-the-E, Moonshot, Mobius, and Sparks are the first, sure to be followed by others. B-to-the-E is 6% beer infused with caffeine, guarana and ginseng, and flavored with blackberry, raspberry and cherry. Moonshot is a more straightforward beer, shot with caffeine, from New Century Ltd., Rhonda Kallman's company, the people who brought us Edison Light beer. Mobius is a bit more New Age, a "European-style lager" embellished with caffeine, taurine, ginseng and thiamine, from a South Carolina entrepreneur named Robert Spencer who thinks that "In a year, we'll be worldwide." . . .
B-to-the-E is a reference to powers of 1O, as explained by Bob Lachky, Vice-President of Brand Management and Director of Global Brand Media for Anheuser-Busch. "'B' is the crown 'B' Budweiser symbol," he explained. "The 'E' stands for something extra, the extra being caffeine, guarana and ginseng." Budweiser raised to something Extra? What's that make Budweiser Select? (And just what is Budweiser Select? Low carb? A new light beer? Something else?) . . .
The real question about all these beers (aside from the obvious one of "Are they beers?") is whether this is an idea whose time has come. The Red Bull boom, which shows no signs of slowing down, would seem to indicate that it has a good chance. But the shaky status of the other recent innovators should warn you that if this idea's time has come, it may be a short reign.
The scorched earth, "get in, get out" strategies on these innovations bring up a more serious question that nags around the edge of the issue. Have these categories had a negative effect on the image of the core, premium beer brands, the "real" beers? Do they, by their success and their very presence, imply that something is wrong with beer's image, that beer can't satisfy the 21- to 3O-year-old drinker's wants? Are people really bored with beer?
