You can't get more evocative than food. Remember Marcel Proust writing about the childhood memories that overcame him as he dipped a madeleine cookie in tea? It's not just one of the great passages in classic literature. It is a blueprint for how food is mapped in our brains to the broader realm of emotions and experience.
When you sell a cookie, perhaps a Damo butter cookie, with space for just a few words on the packaging, what wells are you going to dip into? Are you going to ground your cookie history in the established legacy of the Europe, where the plain butter biscuit first appeared in France in 1886? Or will you focus on quality ingredients like real butter? Or perhaps the crisp scalloped edges, based on the Leibniz Butterkeks? Or would you, like Damo USA, choose to market your cookies as a guilt-free pleasure?
The greatest frustration I face as a brand storyteller is that new or smaller brands suffer from FOMO. They want to cover absolutely everything within their brand story, so they don't miss out on potential customers. This means they wind up with internally inconsistent ideas that weaken the salience of the brand.
Damo makes butter cookies. It positions itself as "a healthier snack" with real butter, no corn syrup, no artificial colors, and just 30 calories per cookie.
I'm coming down hard on Damo because they have a great story to tell, but they aren't telling it.
(Disclosure: I worked on the packaging, but Damo used their own copy... maybe I really am just a petty asshole.)
I read an interesting article about restaurants yesterday. It said the most profitable and popular menu items are usually the least complicated.
Food is ultimately about comfort for most people. There is always an element of satisfaction that goes beyond stuffing our puffy American bellies. When we eat out or buy a premium product, we want to do more than appease physical hunger. We want to satisfy primal cravings for emotional and spiritual nourishment. It goes back to mom and the simple love we craved as infants.
Brand stories need to limit their ingredients too. Simplicity rules because it is easier to process cognitively and can resonate at a deeper emotional level. Strong brand stories often have little to do with product features and everything to do with emotion.
Clean ideas with a few salient (meaningful) points stand out. Kim Kardashian, whatever you think of her, has built an incredibly profitable personal brand based on big tits + big ass in nice clothes and sunglasses. It's pretty much the same thing over and over and people like it because they get it, they don't have to think about it, and they are amused by it.
Brands need the same kind of clarity. A few key ideas that really sum up the attributes that make you special and desirable – expressed in a way that is meaningful to your audience. And remember, people aren't really logical in their choices.
DOVE® Chocolate understands this and appeals directly to emotion in its advertising. There is nothing healthful about it; instead, it a small indulgence that every woman deserves to make herself feel better.
Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) became the hipster beer of choice in 2006 but began to lose its cool factor in 2014. Several elements contributed to this.
First, a highly publicized lawsuit between Pabst Brewery Co. and Miller-Coors in 2014 underscored that Pabst did not make its own beer. Millennials will not tolerate inauthenticity.
Second, hipsters famously dislike being called hipsters. The term is pejorative to a group that prides itself on its individuality. So, any product which is an overt badge of hipsterism is, sooner or later, going to be jettisoned by them.
What were once funny characterizations have become the most obnoxious clichés. Undoubtedly, the marks of a hipster include vintage flannel, thick-framed glasses, fixed-gear bicycles, Pabst Blue Ribbon, American Spirit/Parliament cigarettes, and of course porno mustaches.
Millennial Magazine, Jan. 6, 2016
Third, millennials grew older, more affluent, and switched to beers that could play better into their desire for cultural one-upmanship.
Above all, hipsters wanted to be recognized for being different – to diverge from the mainstream and carve a cultural niche all for themselves.
Matt Granfield, Hipster Mattic
PRB has always been a cheap, watery, no-nonsense beer. There is nothing fancy about it. It is the beer your drink when you mow the lawn, paint the kitchen cabinets, clean out the garage, or cook burgers on the grill.
Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) became the hipster beer of choice around 2006. By 2010, it was outselling both Coors and Sam Adams.
Studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research dissected why hipsters elevated PBR from an iconic blue collar beer to a cool brand.
In 2015, Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) began to show slowing sales. By 2018, millennial lifestyle websites pronounced Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) flat.
Millennials no longer want to drink a cheap, shitty beer with blue collar undertones. They have shifted to craft beers, microbrews, heritage beers, local beers, sour beers and high-gravity beers. All of these beers have bragging rights – stories – that are highly personal and sincere.
Anyone drinking PBR now is either some kind of weird stubborn holdover or just hasn’t gotten the memo.
Tracy Moore, MEL
Hipsters drink beers they can talk about. The back story of PBR no longer has the same genuinely retro appeal it did. It is under new ownership by a Russia-connected partnership.
MillerCoors has produced Pabst Brewing Co. beers in 1999 but this fact blew up in the media in 2018 when MillerCoors and Pabst wound up in court in over MillerCoors' threats to stop production. Although the suit was settled, with an agreement, it became in-your-face knowledge that Pabst does not brew its beers.... and that a PBR is basically interchangeable with a Miller Light.
But this does not mean people are really gravitating to craft beers based on taste. More than anything, coolness matters. Some of the most successful craft breweries are releasing light ales in recognition of this, instead of heavier and more hoppy beers typical of the craft genre.
For a lot of folks who are drinking it, they're not craft beer fans looking for a specific style. The fact it's a craft beer brand is less important than the fact it's a cool brand.
Jamie Smith, Director of Marketing for Firestone Walker
Pabst Brewing Company boasts that it is the largest American-owned brewery and says it "takes pride in brewing beers that have become iconic, cherished American brands. Established in 1844, Pabst Brewing Company has over 30 beers in its portfolio, including Old Milwaukee, Colt 45, Olympia, Tsingtao, Lone Star, Schlitz, Ranier, Stroh's, and Blatz.
Pabst Brewing Company was bought in 2014 by the Russian-born beer entrepreneur Eugene Kashper in partnership with TSG Consumer Partners, a San Francisco-based equity firm. However, the initial media release said the company was bought by Oasis Beverages, a Russian beer enterprise founded by Kashper.
Kashper emigrated to the U.S. from Leningrad when he was six years old and became an American citizen within a few years. After college, he worked in Moscow for Ernst & Young (EY). He left EY in 1994 to start his beer career with the Stroh Brewery Company of Detroit. In 2008, he co-founded Cyprus-based Oasis Beverages, which has quickly become the largest independent brewer in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.
Although Kashper is Russian-American, his financial ties are to Russia more than the U.S. It hurts the image of an all-American beer brand.
The best-selling beers in America didn't achieve their success based on taste. In 2015, the Daily Meal ran a blind taste test of the top-selling beers and the biggest brands were universally panned. Busch Light was called "an offense to beer everywhere." Natural Light was called a "football tailgate beer." Tasters called the aroma of Corona Extra "skunky." Miller Light one a universal "This tastes like nothing." Only Michelob and Heineken ranked well in the taste test - yet they are at the bottom for sales.
Clearly, the American majority prefers watery, tasteless beer. The Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, Patch. and Esquire have all explored the reasons for the American preference for bland beer. Ranjut Dighe, a professor of economics at State University of New York at Oswego, wrote a research paper on the subject. In the late 1800s, factory workers paid more for weak beer so they could have it with lunch at a tavern during the workday and not get drunk. When Prohibition closes 1,568 breweries, American drinkers forgot all about stout, powerful beers. The notion of beer as a "beverage of moderation" persists until today – and is largely responsible for the popularity of bland beers.
There's no point to saving PBR unless Pabst Brewing Company can find a way to make its products after its contract with MillerCoors ends. Ideally, Pabst Brewing Company would buy a shuttered brewery and begin its own production. Then it would actually have a product to attach its label to, honestly.
Besides that, PBR and its brother brands need a strong creative agency. An agency capable of repeating the success of Budweiser's Whassup frogs circa 1999 to 2002.... or any of the following funny (and frequently sexist) commercials.
