Wharton: Can an industry that has spent a fortune on TV ads featuring mud wrestlers and talking frogs suddenly change its stripes to appeal to the wine-and-cheese, single-malt Scotch crowd? The makers of Budweiser and other brands of beer hope so.
Frits van Paasschen, president and chief executive of Coors Brewing, told Knowledge@Wharton that his company supports an industry effort to enhance the beer category. “We have agreed to empower the Beer Institute to develop a communications strategy to promote beer as the leading alcohol beverage in the U.S., but exactly what that looks like has not been decided,” he notes. “It’s up to our individual brands to give people a reason to come back to beer.”
More than anything van Paasschen added, “…it’s incumbent on brewers to make sure they have brands that are interesting and compelling to consumers. We have to find ways to reinforce core equities of each brand, find new and exciting ways to grab attention again, to make beer cool.”
