Marketers think it’s all about the can

I used to think, perhaps naively, that Europeans — who do not consume light lagers as overwhelmingly as Americans do — are not subjected to the same kinds of beer-marketing campaigns as in the U.S. I was sadly mistaken.

An excellent, new book, “Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business” by Josh Noel, details the history of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s attempts to construct a North American craft beer presence.

Noel describes how the company’s marketing focuses on reducing consumer behavior to “drinking occasions”: Is the consumer seeking to savor, indulge or celebrate? For each one of those occasions, they constructed brands to fit them.

Early on, when AnheuserBusch wanted to enter the craft beer market, they wanted to use Michelob as their craft brand. Brewers created beers that were probably good, but marketing had the final say over the recipes and ordered changes to fit their occasions strategy. To them, the beer behind the brand was just a liquid that filled the bottle.

This approach was not as successful as they envisioned, so they started buying established craft brands like Goose Island or Karbach instead, a strategy which has proven controversial but arguably more successful.

Despite this experience, they seem to be repeating the same mistake in Europe.

Beer sales have been slowly declining in Europe for some time, and American-style craft brands have started to make a name for themselves, which together poses a challenge to big brewers. But never fear, the occasion strategy is here to save the day!

Beck’s, a German brand owned by AB InBev, is testing a beer can in its home market shaped like a Champagne flute. The goal is to “earn an enhanced premium perception,” which translates to making beer acceptable in situations where wine or cocktails normally dominate.

The company’s trials of serv- ing the flute cans at art galleries, classical music concerts and other cultural events have met with “overwhelming response,” which is natural because they’ve set up another of marketing’s favorite situations: artificial scarcity. They are now considering a global rollout of the flute can.

I don’t know about you, but I’d feel sillier walking around an art gallery with a beer can on a stem than I would if I poured a regular can into a cup. Maybe this would work well at Wurstfest, where everything is served on a stick.

And then there’s the name: Le Beck’s. What better way to sell beer to a German audience than to put a French article in front of it? (Although, to be fair, it worked great for Pepé Le Pew.)

I don’t mean to unfairly single out just AB InBev when there are many other guilty parties. Carlsberg-owned Feldschlösschen, one of the venerable brands in Switzerland that has become a mass-market lager over the years, is now reacting to the growth of craft brands with Feldschösschen Bügel.

The name of this gem means swing top, as in the seal on the bottle. Instead of making a different kind of beer, they used a different bottle. Why didn’t I think of that? I guess if I had, I’d be brewing beer instead of writing about it.

Courtesy Beck’s beer is attempting to make beer fashionable in settings that traditionally are dominated by wine or cocktails with a Champagne flute shaped can. The new package, dubbed Le Beck’s, is undergoing trials in Germany.

MARKUS HAAS