Naked Women, Fandango Dancers, Bullfighters and Beer Signs…

Thanks to serendipidy and an old book, today’s post is for Will Rust, ECD at Ogilvy in Budapest:

     The Laredo is a pleasant, restful place, known to only a few Anglos. The walls are painted a kind of smoky aquamarine and are hung with many fine commercial lithographs, of such subjects as horses, bullfighters, naked women, fandango dancers, vaqueros swinging their reatas at stampeding cattle, and scouts in charro dress following Indian sign across the llano.

The most spectacular print is a large calendar from the Tecate Cervezaria of Cuidad Mexico that hangs over the back bar. It represents, in brilliant color, an Indian youth bravely mounting the stairway of an Aztec pyramid to become a human sacrifice, while a beautiful maiden crouches at his feet, imploring him to save himself – presumably for her.

So after he hung the calendar, Don Antonio decided to remove it. It was too pagan, too dolorous. But several patrons protested and so he left it. Now three signs tacked to the wall overlap the edges of the print, and so it has become a permanent part of the Laredo’s décor. The signs are in Spanish and, translated literally, say: WE DO NOT SERVE MINORS OF AGE; A PEARL, AS A FAVOR (which refers to another brand of beer); and BARBECUE, TRIPE, AND TRIPE SOUP.

Sig Byrd’s Houston by Sigman Byrd, Viking Press, New York, 1955.

Buy Alabama’s Best but Not If It’s Beer. Is That Official?

This stuck-off-in-a-corner poster still caught my eye when I stopped in the Alabama State Welcome Center on I-20, on the way back to Houston. (See, dear colleagues – marketing can attack no matter how unexpected the venue.)

Why, I turned to the otherwise lovely woman in charge of the making visitors feel welcome, was there no beer in that poster? Alabama-brewed beer?

The look on her face when she repeated the word “Beer?” didn’t need much interpretation. I feel as though I barely escaped from that center unburnt-at-the-stake. It is possible I misunderstood her reaction. But you know, last time I looked beer is not only a “product,” it’s even the direct result of agricultural produce…along with talent, perseverance and creativity.

I am sure that Commissioner Ron Sparks and the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, along with Alabama Grocers Association President Ellie Taylor, are doing their dead-level best to promote George’s Old-Time Barbecue Products and Golden Flake Snack Foods. You can see the whole list of Buy Alabama’s Best (BAB) members right here and I’ll bet they are good people, every one of them.

The brewers are not on this list.

An actual Alabama brewpub such as Montgomery Brewing Company, which I blogged about here, may not qualify; as far as I know the brewpub makes its beers for on-premise consumption only.

But please let me just mention [1] Huntsville’s Old Towne Brewing Company, whose beers I have not yet sampled, and [2] Back Forty Beer Company in Gadsden (ditto). Also [3] Birmingham’s Good People Brewing, the under-2,000-barrel/year brewery whose products are pretty darn tasty. All the products seem to be available at various restaurants and pubs throughout the state.

Shoppers can actually buy these (though the purchases might have to be consumed on site, tsk tsk).

Without meaning to provoke, let me put the marketing questions to Sparks and Taylor: Why no Alabama beer in your promotion materials – or in fact in your entire BAB program?

One random fact: the Brewers Association notes that sales volume at craft brewers climbed 9% in the first half of this year, during which the US beer industry’s total sales volume fell 2.7%. That, ladies and gents of the BAB, is “craft brewers” like product-makers 1, 2 and 3 named above. They are making fine beers. Riding a wave of popularity. And having to do most of the work using their own funds and their own fans.

Alright. There are difficult demands placed on state ag departments at the best of times. Plus, marketing locally made products against the tide of national consumer brands and heavy advertising budgets is no picnic. But don’t miss the opportunity to tap into a great fan base. Include brewers in the Buy Alabama’s Best marketing campaign.

Please direct just a little state-supported love to advertising and selling Alabama beers.

PS: Signalwriter is in Texas and can’t be fully tuned-in on Alabama’s beer market. One of you “experts” is welcome to guest-post here about the status of craft-beer marketing in the Heart of Dixie. Please ignore, for the moment, the 10+ Alabama wineries whose bottled products also don’t appear in the photo above.

Guinness: “Fortune Favors the Bold” Ad Not Bold at All.

Compared to some vodka ads, the new Guinness stout TV campaign by BBDO is limp-wristed and derivative.

A story about the new Guinness campaign is still appearing in AdWeek online under “New Advertising Campaigns.” (I don’t expect news to be a month-and-a-half…old.) The campaign began in November and supposed to run on networks including ESPN, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel and FX, in November, December and March – the brand’s traditional St Patrick’s Day push. Facebook is included, too, though it hasn't shown up yet.

Its new theme is, “Fortune favors the bold.” Unfortunately, the campaign misses bold and that is the least of its problems. Hey! It’s an opinion, right?

So – no bold. The spot takes far too much time with its Rube Goldberg beer-traveling gig, with a cheesy music track that is more boring than brave. The young businessman asking for a raise for his team – the spot’s joke – is an afterthought. This Guinness-hoister is not bold, he’s smug, the product of entitlement. It’s like there are (at least) two different commercials going on here.

Is this particular Guinness spot purely for the US market, where there’re certain formulaic demands? Because otherwise, Guinness has a fine record of “big” spots – world-record-styling commercials involving entire villages, or parodic overblown spots like “Bring this place to life.”

It gets worse. Put the “Bold” spot up against Budweiser’s “All together now” Chicago commercial, released this past summer; the Guinness TV fails on yet another count – a second major indictment being, perhaps, lack of ambition.

The three beer spots mentioned here fall into the journey category rather than the in-the-moment category. For Guinness this time around, both the journey and the joke are trivial.