Chicago – Beer sales had gone flat, while wine was flying off the shelves.
So beermakers decided to steal a page from wine’s marketing manual and create new packaging, flavors and drinks. Now beer is coming back.
The major brewers “blended, became the same,” says Nick Lake, beer expert at ACNielsen, the marketing information company.
“If they didn’t have the brand in some ads – a Budweiser ad, a Miller Lite ad, a Coors ad – if they didn’t have the can in it, it could be any one of the three,” said Lake, the company’s vice president of new business development.
Now, brewers are pitching their beer as cooler, classier and healthier, trying to do for their beverage what Starbucks has done for coffee.
The result is that people are buying more beer. After idling for the past couple of years, beer sales have shown steady growth in recent months, Lake said. Craft beers and imports are driving the growth.
For the 12 months ending April 22, national beer sales totaled nearly $4.1 billion, up about 1.4 percent from a year earlier, according to ACNielsen. Most of the increase was from double- digit sales increases for imported brands and the so-called craft brands. In all, 231 million cases were sold at food, drug and convenience stores combined, up 1 percent from a year earlier.
The fruity malt drinks, organic pale ale, lager and other new beer products that are driving the increase in sales are on display this week in Chicago at the Food Marketing Institute Show, the supermarket industry’s annual trade show.
Beer is still the drink of choice for at least half the people who drink alcohol in the United States, but wine and spirits have been enticing drinkers in ever-growing numbers.
A 2005 Gallup survey found that as many Americans pick wine as their drink of choice as beer.
The wine industry has jockeyed for attention with cute critters on the label, easy-open screwcaps and cans, and party-friendly boxes.
Basically, wine seemed to have gotten more fun. So beer companies started thinking about how to do more with their brews.
“The wine category, in particular red wine, has done a masterful job of selling the health benefits of red wine,” Lake said. “Who hasn’t heard that story? And the reality of it is, you get the same health benefits from beer as you do from red wine.”
