Beer Brand Failures and Successes

There are endless reasons that brands fail. In my research, I've found that most beer brands that fail do so because they don't understand their target audience. For instance, Zima was initially hailed as an ingenious way to sell beer, or something like it, to consumers who don't necessarily enjoy the taste of traditional beer. Unfortunately for Zima, clear beer has a tendency--at least in America-- to be associated by consumers as being less manly than real beer. This girly-man reputation couldn't overcome the brand's target market's (younger beer drinkers) desire for beer that didn't taste like beer.

Another classic beer failure was Tequiza. Tequiza committed the unforgivable sin of targeting a broad audience and lumping them all together into a single demographic. Their commercials obviously targeted Latinos, by using Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Guatamalans, Costa Ricans, etc., but did not distinguish between the groups, treating them as a single "identity". This arguably, contributed to the brand's failure to catch on with Latin Americans, who were insulted by the brand's ads.

Another failed brand is a microbrew in Minnesota called Blue Ridge, owned by Frederick Brewing Co. The brand took off in the early 1990s and had, what appeared to be, a bright future. The parent company expanded to the point of over-expansion, purchasing a large factory in a smallish town, and when water costs skyrocketed and beer trends moved toward fruit and berry flavors and cheap beer (PBR), the company collapsed.

Interesting beer success stories such as Red Stripe (Hooray Beer!) and Rolling Rock's recent viral ad campaign featuring the "Rolling Rock Beer Ape" capitalize on whimsy and humor, and seem to fundamentally understand their target markets' mentality toward the product.

And interesting characteristic of many successful beer brands is the mystique of the brand's logo, or the brand itself. For instance, Rolling Rock's label features a mysterious "33", which has created wide speculation regarding the meaning of the number.

"The mysterious '33' has been on the label of Rolling Rock since the Latrobe Brewing Company brewed its first batch in 1939, but what does it actually stand for? Theories about the origin of the cryptic '33', some undoubtedly hatched in bar arguments, range from the year 1933 (the year Prohibition was repealed), how many steps it took to walk from the brewmaster's office to the brewing floor, the number of the racing horse on the label, and even the highest level of Freemasonry (33rd degree).

According to James Tito, the former CEO of Latrobe Brewing, the number '33' may actually be an accident. When the founders of the company came up with the slogan--

Rolling Rock - From the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe, we tender this premium beer for your enjoyment as a tribute to your good taste. It comes from the mountain springs to you.

--someone wrote '33' at the end to indicate the number of words, but the bottle printer mistakenly incorporated it into the label graphic. They decided to keep the 33 instead of having to scrap and replace the bottles. Even though the slogan had been changed several times in the history of Rolling Rock, the company had made sure to use the same number of words."

Quoted from here

Other examples are Bass, whose triangle logo is the first trademark registered in Britain, and can be seen in Manet's painting Bar at the Folies-Bergère.


That's some great publicity.

For your reading pleasure, enjoy the following classic examples of brands that have inadvertently stuck their proverbial feet in their proverbial mouths:
1: An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope’s visit. Instead of “I saw the Pope” (el Papa), the shirts read “I saw the potato” (la papa).
2: Coors put its slogan, “Turn it loose,” into Spanish, where it was read as “Suffer from diarrhea.”
3: Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” translated into “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave,” in Chinese.
4: When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the U.S., with the beautiful baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since most people can’t read English.
5: General Motors’ Chevy Nova failed in Latin America. The thing was that “Nova” means “It doesn’t go” in Spanish
6. Ford flopped in Brazil when they introduced Pinto to the market. The problem was that in Brazilian Portuguese slang “pinto” is “small penis”.