After taking a sip of his brandy shooter, Lou Royce lifted the cold draft of Old Style beer to his lips and took a long drink that emptied nearly half the glass. In the cool staleness of a Chicago tavern, a half-dozen other drinkers repeated the motion, as if they were rehearsing for some barroom chorus line.
This is my kind of beer, declared Royce, who is 62 and semiretired. Most other beers, he said, ”taste like they were brewed through a horse.” Down the line, other men nodded in agreement.
Competition in the beer industry hinges on just such opinions.
Europeans claim that all American beers taste the same: too light and carbonated. But when it comes to selling beer, an old Latin saying may be more to the point: ”There`s no arguing about taste.”
What is most important in the beer business is image.
Brewers will spend about $1 billion this year to promote, market and advertise their individual brands. They are the major sponsors of all network sports programs, and they underwrite hundreds of public events from rock concerts to wet T-shirt contests to drag racing.
A recent survey dismayed liquor industry leaders because it showed almost no positive word associations with the terms ”spirits” or ”hard liquor.”
But when people were asked about beer they responded with such words as
”sports,” ”young” and ”sociable.”
That image has been achieved patiently and carefully. Local beer distributors often donate kegs of beer to political rallies, and neighborhood bars sponsor softball teams. The largest brewers hire student representatives on college campuses across the nation, and this year Coors is sponsoring a $500,000 college scholarship fund for the children of Vietnam veterans.
That last example illustrates another fact in the industry: To separate one beer from another, brewers need a pitch–real, imagined or emotional. Royce`s Old Style brand is double-brewed or ”kraeusened,” while executives at Miller Brewing want people to know their beer is ”brewed the American way.” Anheuser-Busch is eager for Chicagoans to connect Budweiser with ”I`m a Cub fan and Bud man.”
(A favorite slogan among beer enthusiasts appeared on the label of a pre- Prohibition beer brewed in Michigan`s Upper Peninsula. It read, ”Brewed Pure, Without Drugs or Poison.”)
Sometimes the brewers can just pick up on ingrained beliefs. ”People like the Wisconsin image; they believe it is clean and pure,” said Russell Cleary, chairman of the Heileman Brewing Co. in La Crosse, Wis., which makes Old Style, among other regional brands. ”We stress the Wisconsin image and the deep artesian wells . . .”
What is also being stressed these days is the stiffer competition facing the beer industry.
Wine coolers already have cut into beer sales–by an estimated 1 million barrels last year–and some brewers are creating their own malt coolers to regain or at least share in that market.
A national trend toward lighter beverages and less drinking affected hard liquor first, but now it has almost stopped the growth of beer sales. Beer sales were up only 0.2 percent in 1985.
”It means little, maybe 200,000-300,000 barrels compared with overall production of nearly 3 billion gallons (about 183 million barrels),” said Philip Katz, a spokesman for the Beer Institute in Washington.
The end of the postwar baby boom in America also has affected the industry, because beer sales traditionally have been dependent on the drinking habits of younger men. ”The aging population does not do well for beer,”
said Robert Weinberg, a St. Louis beer analyst and an industry consultant.
”Beer sales are strongest among males 18-35 years old, and during the boom that population grew by 15 million people,” explained Michael Schudson, a University of California professor and author of ”Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion.”
”If my logic is right, it will be almost impossible for beer sales not to slacken off in the next decade–and the beer industry can do nothing about it.”
Brewers claim they certainly will try to do something about it.
Heileman, for instance, is expanding its product line to include almost every beverage from light beer to nonalcoholic near beer, from malt coolers to mineral water.
Brewers saw the future in the early 1970s, when Miller introduced its Lite beer. (It was actually preceded by Chicago-based Meister Brau, which produced the first ”light” beer in the late 1960s.) Now about 22 percent of all beer sold in America is ”light,” with less alcohol and fewer calories
(about 100 calories per glass and 4.2 percent alcohol, compared to 150 calories and 4.7 percent alcohol in regular beer).
Nonalcoholic brews such as Kaliber, Kingsbury and Moussy increased 25 percent in sales last year to 529,000 barrels, while low-alcohol beers (2.3 percent) failed to catch on and sales declined about 7 percent, according to Fortune magazine.
”There`s no question that demographics are changing,” said Cleary, but he said consumption trends do not all point in the same direction. ”Coolers are a volatile product and highly seasonal. There`s going to be a big casualty rate there,” he said.
On the other hand, so-called ”microbreweries,” plants that produce less than 10,000 barrels of beer a year, are increasing. The premium beer or specialty market is growing with brands like Samuel Adams Boston Lager and Anchor Steam beer from San Francisco. One microbrewery is expected to open in Chicago later this year. ”It`s not just a fad,” said Cleary, who built Heileman`s new 100,000-barrel brewery in Milwaukee.
There is an irony to that, because there is an opposite trend among the largest brewers.
Anheuser-Busch, based in St. Louis, now controls more than 36 percent of the entire U.S. market. Combined with the other top four brewers, Miller, Stroh, Heileman and Coors, they have about 90 percent of all beer sales.
”I expect in eight or nine years there will only be two or three national breweries,” said a New York advertising executive whose agency handles several beer accounts.
At Larry`s Tap on north Elston Avenue, several patrons and a bartender were trying to recall Chicago`s brands: Edelweiss (”It tastes so nice”), Rheingold, Tavern Pale, Peter Hand`s Meister Brau, Birk`s Superb, Fox DeLuxe, Best`s Hapsburg, Atlas Prager and Canadian Ace.
”There use to be a dozen or more,” said one customer. ”Nah, it was 21, maybe 22,” said another. Actually, at its peak Chicago had 52 breweries. That was in 1919, on the eve of the Prohibition Era.
After the repeal of Prohibition, there were 32 breweries in 1937, 18 in 1950, 10 in 1960 and 2 in 1969. Peter Hand, the last Chicago-brewed beer, closed its plant at 1000 W. North Ave. in 1978.
On the national scene, there has been mounting criticism of the beer industry for promoting sales to youth, especially now that the minimum drinking age is 21 in 40 states and another 5 states are expected to raise the age limit to 21 before the end of the year.
Weinberg said some college beer promotions ”border on being criminal.”
He cited promotions that push chug-a-lug contests, drinking bouts that involve fast drinking and almost certain intoxication.
He also said that in many school districts, parents and high school officials have tried to combat drinking and driving–especially on prom nights and other festive occasions–with their own taxi services.
Groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and a similar students group (SADD) have created pressure on beer marketers. In several state legislatures, new bills propose to limit ”happy hours” and restrict sales.
”Should gas stations sell beer and wine coolers in single cans?” asked Tom Colthurst, who runs an alcohol education project at the University of California at San Diego.
”The symbolism linking drinking and driving is too great, and sometimes the neon signs for beer are larger than for gasoline,” he said, adding that in California, ”the price of a six-pack of beer is not much greater than for a six-pack of cola.”
Industry critics also complain that beer advertising is misleading because it promotes a false image of being an anytime, anywhere drink. One academic study suggested it is the drink most involved in drunk-driving fatalities.
”The advertising is geared to show lifestyles and create an aura that is related to glamor and success–the good life,” said Thomas Seessel, executive director of the National Council on Alcoholism. ”Our responsibility is to demythologize it.”
Federal regulations governing beer and wine commercials include one that forbids using professional athletes, but Miller Brewing found that retired sports figures could walk through a loophole in that regulation. Groups opposed to all broadcast advertising of alcohol also argue brewers are targeting beer ads to specific groups such as women, blacks and the young.
The wine industry is worried about a backlash on advertising. ”Our policy is to avoid specific advertising,” said Jack Davies of the Winegrowers Association. ”It avoids stimulating consumption by any segment of society, and we avoid use of heroes, athletes and success figures.”
Brewers appear nonplussed by much of the criticism. Beer is the beverage of moderation, they say–it is nonthreatening and wholesome; it is practically food.
It also has the image of the ”working man`s drink”–and that, the brewers understand, is a powerful image.
