Boozin’ Blog

This comes from Canada where the marketing geniuses at Molson Coors got in some hot water over their cold beer campaign. They’ve been promoting the coldness of their beer – a claim that is completely puzzling to anyone with half a brain – and thought that it would be fun poke some fun at their potential consumers. They exploited the reputation of Torotonians as being uptight and put up billboards in Vancouver claiming that Coors is “Colder than most people from Toronto.”

Clever. Not only does it get the message across that Coors is cold – I still don’t see where this is a viable claim – plus it shows Coors is so with Vancouver in the apparent East/West rivalry with Toronto. The genius of it all is that the billboards were all in Vancouver; no way anyone from Toronto would ever see them, right? I mean, people in Canada don’t have any forms of transportation that can move them from one place to another, do they?

Turns out they do. And one of them did. A picture was taken and sent back home and an icy turd hit the fan. It seems that calling people uptight isn’t a good idea. If they really are uptight then they probably aren’t going to laugh along. If they aren’t uptight then you just wind up looking rude and ignorant.

After some loud protests the company decided to take down the billboards early.

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What’s the perfect job? Well, for me it has to include beer at some level. More than once I’ve considered working at a brewery because most provide their employees with regular supplies of free beer.

How about a company that provides beer during retirement? Sign me up!

But as quickly as I learn about it the dream dies. I had no idea that one of the benefits of working at Molson was free beer after retirement but at the same time I learned about it I learned that it was no more.

Molson employees and retirees were told recently that the free beer they’ve been enjoying will be drying up soon. Each will receive gradually less beer until 2015 when the company will stop providing the perk altogether.

The retirees are pissed! In fact, they held a public protest outside of the Molson brewery in St. John’s, Newfoundland. I doubt it did much good.

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Did you know that Inbev owned Labatt USA? Yeah, me neither. I’m not saying I’m surprised. It’s just that that little factoid hadn’t floated my way.

Now we all know that Labatt is Canadian. This is something that its marketers are determined not to let us forget. Labatt USA is the brewer’s legal presence in the US. It handles importing the beer, arranging for its distribution and its marketing.

While under Inbev’s control Labatt USA moved from Connecticut to Buffalo, NY. According to the article, Labatt and Anheuser-Busch brands are the two biggest sellers in Buffalo so this is a logical move. It seems likely to me that Inbev would have continued its control of the successful brand but for a requirement by the justice department that they had to unload the Blue. Apparently someone somewhere had the sense to observe that perhaps one company shouldn’t control 99.99% of the beer sold in the US.

(That’s a little joke by exaggeration for my literalistic readers. I’m aware that ABI doesn’t control quite that much but you’ve got to admit that they control a lot!)

So the company had to be sold. For a while late last year this caused some concerns but a buyer has been found. KPS Capital Partners, a New York City based private equity firm, now owns Labatt USA as well as High Falls and a license for the Seagram’s Cooler Escapes and Smooth brands. So, there won’t be any interruption in Labatt’s supply lines but there are still a few questions in the air.

Inbev had agreed to do some of the brewing of Labatt in the US. This isn’t that unusual in the business of big beer. For instance, despite its strong Irish image, very little of the Guinness drank world-wide is actually brewed in Ireland.

But Labatt has more than just a strong Canadian image. They’ve gone so far as to use the phrase “imported daily from Canada.” They would certainly lose some cache if this were no longer actually 100% true. Whether or not KPS will brew Labatt in the US is still unresolved.

Another problem is that extracting one beer company from another isn’t as easy as having the lawyers draw up the papers. US distribution is a complex and changes from state to state. In many places Labatt is distributed on Anheuser-Busch trucks. It’s going to take some time to get all of the changes in place before the brand will be entirely free of ABI.

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