Beer marketing
USA Today checks in on the efforts by (large) beer companies to check growing interest in spirits among twentysomethings - their core audience. The articles states: “Among the strategies on tap to lure well-heeled 25- to 35-year-olds back to beer: new products, more sophisticated ads and classier packaging — all marketing staples of liquor brands.” Notice, no mention of making the products themselves more sophisticated.
Meanwhile, Ageless Marketing suggests “shorting” beer (in the stock market sense). I’m not sure I entirely buy into the following logic, but I also think there may be an alternative to his conclusion. The premise:
Could the growing wave of twentysomethings switching from beer to spirits be another example of the unconscious influence on younger people being exerted by the New Customer Majority – folks 40 and older who outnumber younger adults by 130 million to 86 million?
In particular, are members of the psychological center of gravity (PCG) transforming the drinking patterns of younger adults?
If the PCG exists doesn’t it seem possible that those of us 40 and older who still drink beer might exert a similar influence? Thus if breweries pay attention to the older market - and to return to the focus of the USA Today article, I don’t think they do that by marketing beer in hip, aluminum cans - they could gain doubly. But how do they do that? Not by repackaging a product I left behind years ago.
Quite honestly, I don’t care if the mega-breweries notice what I drink. Plenty of small breweries seem willing to look out for my interest. But it doesn’t seem right, particularly at a time when we have more flavorful beer than ever available to us, to read about beer’s “troubles” …
