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ENDORSEMENT WATCH
BLUE MOON RISING
A-B LOOSENS THE APRON STRINGS
Blue Moon – brand of the year. That’s the word from IRI, which recently released its Top 30 Beer Brand Performers ranking, the result of intensive share vs. volume growth pricing in the last year.
With the top three coming from Blue Moon, the Sam Adams seasonal line and Heineken Premium Light, the real big movers of the beer category continue to be exposed: craft, craft-y and imports.
“The historic trend of consumers trading up and paying premium price for their favorite brands continued in 2007,” said Bump Williams, general manager, IRI Beer, Wine and Spirits Practice. “In fact, 20 of the top 30 Beer performers are high-end brands that include 13 imports and seven craft brands. Brewers, Distributors and Retailers are doing a phenomenal job of meeting the ever-changing tastes of consumer demands with their new product innovations. The key now is getting the proper amount of shelf space and distribution in the right stores across multiple trade channels to support these power brands.”
The Top 30 Beer Brand Performers ranking is designed to highlight the brands that experienced significant year-over-year growth across total U.S. supermarkets in 2007. In addition to looking at volume and dollar sales, IRI also examined pricing, share growth and incremental volume and dollar contribution.
It’s not that the big brewers aren’t getting results – all three big light brands made the top 10. But the IRI poll shows retailers where the tastiest trends are.
Gotta wonder if there’s some dissension in the Red Sox’ ranks. No, not over anyone’s share of World Series dough, either. It’s probably over the variety of enhanced water they’re throwing into the clubhouse cooler. David Ortiz is well known as one of the big guns hawking vitaminwater for Coke, but Pepsi trucks in the Boston area now show catcher – and Sox team captain – Jason Varitek shilling for SoBe Life Water. Fenway Park is a Coke stadium, to be sure, but who can argue with the Captain? And what would Ted Williams, think, anyway? Chances are, he’d think “where’s the damned Moxie?” Maybe in the freezer with the rest of you, Ted… Meanwhile, look who else is on the ball for vitaminwater? Yep, there he is, basketball’s second coming, LeBron James. Remember the King James comic book for PowerAde? Betcha they don’t do volume two with him in a vitaminwater uniform.
Since the late ‘90s, the big boys of beer have successfully swallowed up the competition, holding wholesalers to exclusive contracts and dominating shelf space. Now that Darwinian order appears to be backfiring. Consumers want variety – read: crafts and imports – and wholesalers want to deliver it.
Anheuser-Busch, which has been under pressure from wholesalers, is trying to placate them and bring a little variety to your consumers. Distributors unable to carry A-B’s “aligned brands”—primarily InBev offerings like Stella Artois or Grolsch—because of statutory franchise laws will now be allowed to carry other beers, water or tea, but not wine or distilled spirits from companies other than A-B or its affiliates. While A-B is working to minimize competition with its own brands, the hope is that the arrangement will re-energize its relationship with distributors.
Meanwhile, A-B has looked within its own product line to capitalize on the craving for crafts, which are growing faster than the overall beer segment. Although its Michelob line has lagged in recent years, A-B is attempting to reinvent the “draught beer for connoisseurs” turning to a soon-to-be-launched Michelob Brewing Co. to foster A-B’s fuller-flavored beers. By turning the producer of products like Michelob, Michelob Porter, AmberBock into its own little unit, letting them experiment with old-style and new beers – like a dark wheat Bavarian-style, due out later this year – it might be able to promote its place as a home for better brew.