Posts Tagged ‘ad’
The Sports Illustrated Index: Advertising
We got to thinking that the much-ballyhooed swimsuit issue, published in Sports Illustrated every winter, might shed some light on trends in the economy, alcohol beverage advertising, and print advertising more generally. In the past, the swimsuit issue has been a prime place for beer and spirits advertising.
This year’s issue is 178 pages, chock full of bikinis. Only 7.3 pages are devoted to alcohol beverage ads. This is nearly a 50% drop off from two years ago, when the economy (and print advertising) were flying a lot higher.
A big part of this is due to one brand. Budweiser advertising was at seven pages in 2007 and down to a skimpy two pages in 2009.
Almost all of the 2009 ads seem to be customized for the swimsuit edition. Back in 2007, it was about half and half. There is essentially no wine advertising in any of these three issues, and beer accounts for 2/3 while spirits are at about 1/3.
Herewith, two of the better alcbev-centric ads tailored to this magazine.
The text on this Glenlivet Scotch ad may be hard to read, and is worth repeating. It says:
THE GLENLIVET was ESTABLISHED when SWIMWEAR was a lady’s SAFEGUARD from the elements. Back in 1824, even the SLIGHTEST display of ANKLE could put the FIRE in any gentleman’s HEART. While such MODESTIES have been cast aside, FORTUNATELY, the QUINTESSENCE of good taste is still to be ENJOYED with the SINGLE MALT that STARTED IT ALL.
They are both from 2007 and the later ones don’t seem as good.
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Beer with Vitamins
TTB is unlikely to allow “Beer with Vitamins” anytime soon. And yet every couple of months, we hear a report of another “beer with vitamins.” Most often, it’s based on flimsy evidence. But every now and then, something very close or on the mark will turn up.
Stampede Light (above) shows a beer sometimes purported to contain vitamins. The approved labels don’t mention vitamins. But the advertising strongly hints that this beer contains added vitamins. The website (as of March 2009) refers to doctors, vitamins, health, and shows a person doing one-handed pushups. It probably went much further, before 2007. Forbes reports that Larry Schwartz:
launched Stampede in November 2005 by marketing it as “beer with horsepower” and trumpeting its added vitamins in print ads and radio spots in Texas–and on his MySpace page. A short time later he received a letter from the Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau, part of the U.S. Treasury Department. The TTB says health-related claims made by alcoholic drink manufacturers must be verifiable and balanced with revelations about the health risks of excessive alcohol consumption.
Schwartz … who has racked up $100,000 in legal fees while negotiating with the TTB, hopes below-the-radar marketing tricks will give Stampede a boost–and keep him out of trouble.
For example, it looks as if Mr. Schwartz has retained a certain actress to say what he’d better not say.
We did find another brand — with clear evidence of added vitamins, right on the approved front labels. But before setting off any more false alarms about beer with vitamins, we hasten to add that these approvals are not recent, and their current status is “surrendered.”
TTB is at the early stages of developing regulations related to alcohol beverages containing vitamins, minerals and caffeine.
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ad, caffeine/secondary effects, policy
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Champagne Battle Spills into Time Magazine
We never thought we’d see a TTB controversy make it into a big ad in the national media — let alone a full page ad in Time Magazine. The yellow ad is on page 69 of the December 29, 2008 “Person of the Year” double issue and it covers the entire page.
The French Office of Champagne is not at all pleased that some non-French wines qualify to be called Champagne, under US law. The ad says “Masquerading as Champagne … isn’t fair. … A legal loophole allows” some names to be misused.
In 2006, after many years of negotiations between the US and the European Union, and agreement, TTB set forth the current US rule in TTB Industry Circular 2006-1:
the U.S. made a commitment to seek to change the legal status of [terms like Champagne] to restrict their use solely to wines originating in the applicable EU member state, with certain exceptions. Because the IRC specifically defines semi-generic names, this law must be changed in order to restrict the usage of the names to wines originating in the EU. Assuming the law is so changed, the Agreement contains an exception to this rule. We refer to this exception as the “grandfather” provision. Under the “grandfather” provision, any person or his or her successor in interest may continue to use a semi-generic name or Retsina on a label of a wine not originating in the EU, provided the semi-generic name or Retsina is only used on labels for wine bearing the same brand name, or the brand name and the fanciful name, if any, that appear on a COLA that was issued prior to March 10, 2006.
E. & J. Gallo appears to have been very deft in navigating this elaborate path, to preserving the term Champagne on its top-selling brands such as Barefoot (above), Tott’s, Andre, and Ballatore. Box 19 of the Barefoot COLA shows that TTB grandfathered this brand.
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ad, business strategy, legally interesting/controversial, origin, policy
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