Brewbound Podcast: Who Won the Super Bowl Booze Ad Battle? Plus, BORGs Explained

[00:00:00] Jessen Fonte: Who won Super Bowl Bevalk Wars? We'll discuss next on the Brewbound Podcast. Plus, Borgs! Hello and welcome to the Brewbound podcast. My name is Justin Kendall and I am the editor of Brewbound and I am joined by Jessen Fonte, the managing editor of Brewbound and Zoe Licata, Brewbound reporter extraordinaire and also somebody who's going to explain borgs to old people, which means me. So, before we get started, we plug that we're going to be talking Super Bowl Ad Wars, and we've got a couple of ad execs here to discuss. Deb Gabor, CEO of Sol Marketing, and Mario Natarelli, Managing Director at Emblem, will be joining us later. So stay tuned for that. Also, like, rate, review, subscribe. Get those notifications for the Brewbound Podcast if you like what we're doing. Zoe and Jess, great to see you.

[00:00:59] Zoe Licata: Terrific to see you, as always. Yes.

[00:01:03] Jessen Fonte: I say see on a podcast. I've already ruined this.

[00:01:08] Super Bowl: We get the pleasure of seeing each other. No one else does.

[00:01:12] Jessen Fonte: Exactly. Anyway, Super Bowl. Zoe, I think you are the one of the three of us that threw a natural party and you took the most care in creating Super Bowl cookies.

[00:01:24] Super Bowl: Thank you. Thank you. Yes, we have our annual Super Bowl party with friends that honestly has become mainly just an excuse to have a party in the past few years since Patriots haven't really been there. I think the general consensus that it was a bit of an underwhelming Super Bowl this year across the board for both like advertisements and the game itself. I don't know about what you guys experienced, but

[00:01:51] Jessen Fonte: Well, I bring this up because as a salty New Englander, I feel like this is the perfect opportunity for Black Out Rage Gallon. Is this not the occasion for Black Out Rage Gallon or Borg?

[00:02:03] Super Bowl: Honestly, it would have made the day probably a lot more fun. So I'm kind of disappointed that I did not bring a Borg to the occasion, but it will be happening the St. Patrick's Day. I've put in the word with everybody. St. Patrick's Day Darty will have Borgs.

[00:02:23] Zoe Licata: Zoe, for the people at home who maybe aren't as on the internet as we are, please explain what a Borg is.

[00:02:32] Super Bowl: So a borg is something that the youth started doing. I first saw it this fall for a big tailgating accessory, but you basically have Rage Gallon jug of water and you pour out about half of it or put it in a water bottle. And in that gallon, you add some spirits of your choosing, usually vodka, usually a full day's worth of that spirit. and some flavoring, whether it's like a meal or something. And if you choose an additional hydration helper, like a liquid IV. And these gallons then are with you for the whole day, however your partying experience is. You have to name it, that is a requirement. So there's usually a lot of nice puns going on. I saw someone did a Ruth Bader Ginsburg the other day. and then it's with you for the whole day. And it has that cap on it, so it's resealable, it's yours, you know what's in it. So I'm a fan. You got hydration, you got customization, and you got some added protections going on.

[00:03:43] Jessen Fonte: Yeah, no open container.

[00:03:44] Super Bowl: No.

[00:03:46] Zoe Licata: I wish this was around the bazillion years ago when I was in college, because of all those reasons you just pointed out. My only concern is the temperature. so yeah we talked about this on twitter i said can i carry like a yeti tumbler of ice around with me and pour my borg over this ice and friend of the Brewbound pod dave infante told me that my tweet was equivalent to being the cops so is everybody just drinking these like lukewarm that's kind of weird

[00:04:16] Super Bowl: I mean, I'm sure it starts out a little cold, but I'm sure by the end of the day, it's pretty warm. My plan is to put some ice in there to start the day off and that'll last me a couple hours. And then by the end of the day, when it's a little warmer, I don't think I'm really going to care about the temperature as much there.

[00:04:34] Zoe Licata: I've had so many solo cups taken out of mass containers of jungle juice, whether that's like a Gatorade jug or like... a Rubbermaid container or an actual trash can that I'm frankly not sure how I'm alive. So I think this is a welcome evolution in dartying.

[00:04:52] Super Bowl: First, we took beer out of the beer pong cups and had our own. Now we're saying no more Jungle Juice, you're getting a Borg. So we're trying to add some new innovation to the young party scene.

[00:05:07] Zoe Licata: Gen Z saving the world, one alcohol delivery vehicle at a time. We try.

[00:05:13] Jessen Fonte: What is this going to do to Hard Seltzer?

[00:05:17] Zoe Licata: Thank you for bringing this back to business.

[00:05:21] Jessen Fonte: Isn't this exactly like the point of hard seltzer is like basically booze water with a little bit of flavor and now people are just like gallon jugs of water, vodka, and you know, some crystal light or Kool-Aid.

[00:05:38] Super Bowl: Yeah, certainly cheaper. yeah i'm sure we'll see some people try to like make their borg with some white claws or something they'll combine it a little bit but hard seltzers are already having like a weird when do we want them when do we not moment i think this is also encouraging for RTDs because people are like, we're going to be drinking spirits. So if you don't want a Borg, but you still want your spirits based beverage, then you're going to go for an RTD rather than a hard seltzer. So I think it's just the changing taste.

[00:06:12] Jessen Fonte: I can only imagine the beer company executives listening to this right now and thinking, what in the hell is going on here? Like, do I have to compete with this thing called the Borg and worry about this?

[00:06:26] Super Bowl: I would say to like ease their stress a little bit is that these trends tend to fluctuate significantly. So now that we're in these big boozy gallons, I'm sure the next trend is going to go the opposite direction. It's going to be about beer and light, moderate things. So there's always tends to be fluctuating between extremes.

[00:06:50] Zoe Licata: Plus, I mean, I feel like boards have now gone a little bit more mainstream. They were covered by the today show. Not sure if it was on air, just on their website, but basically like as soon as you know, the show beloved by older moms, the, the nation over is onto something, the, the LDA youth will, will begin to move on.

[00:07:08] Super Bowl: There's an excellent, an excellent Abbott elementary episode about the kids doing the No, no, but about that concept of trans fading and the kids were doing desking or standing on desks and running around. And as soon as they got the dorky teacher to do it and post online, then they stopped because it wasn't cool anymore. So we're almost there.

[00:07:33] Jessen Fonte: If I break it up, it's dead. So don't worry is what we're saying. So if you're not drinking boards during a Super Bowl party, what are you drinking?

[00:07:44] Super Bowl: This year, it was a lot of around me was a lot of Bud Light because it's kind of a full day affair. You got to keep kind of light. And we mixed in some older family members this year. So all of us ladies were drinking espresso martinis.

[00:08:01] Jessen Fonte: Oh, fancy.

[00:08:03] Zoe Licata: That doesn't scream longevity, but very fancy.

[00:08:08] Super Bowl: I didn't see a lot of creativity with Super Bowl beverages consumption-wise this year. My cousin, who's 23, posted a picture of her fridge, and she had White Claws, McUltras, Bud Light, and Topo Chico hard seltzer. So just all light things to get you through the day.

[00:08:35] Jessen Fonte: That tracks with what was going on in the on-premise that you reported, Jess.

[00:08:41] Zoe Licata: Yeah, the number one poured beer nationwide was Bud Light. It was also the number one draft beer in the competing team's hometowns of Kansas City, Missouri, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Interestingly though, in Phoenix, which hosted the Super Bowl, the top draft beer was Modelo Especial, which was the case last year when the Super Bowl was in LA too. Bud Light lagers, top style by volume nationwide, followed by lagers, followed by IPAs.

[00:09:10] Jessen Fonte: Yeah. And we've got commercials to talk about, I guess. One that we haven't really talked about, which is the Molson Coors commercial, which was first about Coors Light and Miller Lite, but ended up being about, oh, I don't want to spoil this for you all, but Blue Moon.

[00:09:26] Zoe Licata: Yeah. You know, and we do talk about it with our guests, but mixed reviews on this one across the board. I think all of us kind of agree that it was, to me, as a former beer marketeer, it felt like they didn't really consumer test this at all. And I don't think they did, because they kept it really tight. It was very much under wraps. But to me, it felt more like they made it for themselves and their wholesalers. I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from this as a drinker. And if I didn't know all the things that I know, what I would be taking away from this as a drinker is that one company makes all three of these brands.

[00:10:04] Jessen Fonte: there's a lot of hype around this ad, and when I first saw it, you've got two guys sitting on bar stools, and my first thought, it's a Super Bowl ad, who are these guys? And I get it, it's not about these, it's been about the brands, but it's a Super Bowl ad, and I think your expectation immediately is like, celebrity, celebrity, celebrity, and then to have not celebrities, a little bit thrown and that might be a me problem, but then it turns into this crouching tiger, hidden dragon, everything all at once, everywhere, whatever that movie title is, you know, CGI fight. And it's like, okay, why are these guys fighting over these two beers? And then at the end, it's like the female bartender puts down a blue moon and it's about blue moon and I guess one positive I could say, if I'm looking for a positive, is a craft beer, put it in the quotations or put an asterisk next to it if you need to, got a Super Bowl ad. That's something.

[00:11:11] Super Bowl: Yeah, that is something. Even when Michelle St-Jacques from Molson Coors was talking about, or in their blog post about this decision, she's even like, no, it was really like a Miller Lite, Coors Light ad still. It's just the added little highlight for Blue Moon at the end of the day was a cherry on top. So it kind of got an ad technically, but not really.

[00:11:36] Jessen Fonte: I mean, it was seconds.

[00:11:39] Super Bowl: Yeah, and I mentioned this too when we had to discuss this earlier. I didn't even realize that Blue Moon was in it because I was bored with the ad before it was even over because it was just two dudes fighting and I was like, this is not for me. So I didn't even find out that Blue Moon was in the ad until later when I was on TikTok and saw someone make a joke ad about it and mentioned Blue Moon. So it wasn't effective in that part for me as a viewer.

[00:12:08] Jessen Fonte: It was an odd departure for them, which has been, they've been pretty good Sol Marketing to people that don't necessarily drink their beer. And to go in this direction of like, far be it from me, a professional wrestling fan to like, you know, poo poo, fake violence, but it was an odd direction to go from like, get home from work and crack a beer, you know, and take off your bra and relax in a chill way to I'm throwing ice chips and, you know, we're, we're punching each other with beers in hand. I don't know, like, I'm, I'm sorry, but it just did not feel it. But they got fairly decent scores on some of the ratings, like the ad week, ad age, that type of thing, you know? So it, it sounds like industry folks, or at least ad exec folks liked it.

[00:13:03] Super Bowl: It created social buzz. I think they said that who owns Blue Moon was like this number two Google search for the night. So people are talking about it and like exploring more for it. What good that does is to be determined.

[00:13:20] Jessen Fonte: We'll see in the sales data in a month or two, I guess.

[00:13:24] Zoe Licata: I missed it entirely. I was in the kitchen. My husband turns the volume down on the commercials.

[00:13:31] SPEAKER_??: Fair.

[00:13:31] Zoe Licata: I mean, I watched them all the next day.

[00:13:34] Jessen Fonte: Let's talk about something other than Super Bowl ads, because I'm sure folks are getting tired of that. And by the time they hear this, the game's been over for like four days and everybody's thinking about free agency and the NFL draft. So I guess fairly decent sized news coming out of Massachusetts, which is Jax Abbey is shuttering Springdale, their ale making sister brand.

[00:13:56] Zoe Licata: Yeah, the Springdale Beer Company came into the world in late 2016, so just past its sixth birthday. And it's an offshoot of Jack's Abbey. Jack's Abbey solely makes lagers, so under the Springdale name, they were able to play with a lot more styles. Started out as a barrel aging experiment and You know, once they got out, they, you know, still do barrel aging, but they had been doing hazy IPAs, kolsch's, European ales, sour stuff. I had always really liked their sours, but they announced that they are discontinuing the brand. It did have its own branded taproom within the Jack's Abbey facility in Framingham, Mass.

[00:14:38] Jessen Fonte: It was massive.

[00:14:39] Zoe Licata: Yeah, yeah. Had like arcade games. It was very cool. But, you know, the company just needed more space for, I think, some packaging operations and also office space. So the Springdale Barrel Room and Tap Room had to be converted. They were looking into other tap rooms in other locations. The Brighton neighborhood of Boston was on the list for a while, but all those other locations fell through. The real estate market right now is super volatile. So that makes a lot of sense. So with no tap room home, they actually decided to shutter the whole thing. It's on hiatus indefinitely. We checked in with their VP Sol Marketing, Rob Day, who told me that the Springdale brand in 2021 did 1500 barrels. So it's not a lot. And one thing we didn't include in the story that we have up about this is Jax Abbey, which we've covered extensively, has had a situation with their former Massachusetts wholesaler that spilled into Rhode Island where they didn't feel like they were getting the mindshare that their brand needed and deserved. So I think they've since moved on to new partners. But when you're in a situation like that, I think everything that you can do to keep the focus on your main brand that drives most of your volume is what you got to do. So this is a bummer because I like their beers, but it makes sense to me.

[00:15:55] Jessen Fonte: And they picked up so much extra contract volume from Night Shift that I am imagining that they're plowing a lot of that into, you know, just producing a lot of the Night Shift core brands.

[00:16:08] Super Bowl: Yeah, yeah. I was able to take a look at their production space a couple months ago for an event. We were doing some tours in the back. And the Night Shift stuff takes up a lot of space in that section. So it was getting pretty crowded just a few months ago. And that was before they officially had announced that Night Shift was moving all of its contract producing to Jack Zappi. So I'm sure it's only gotten worse.

[00:16:34] Jessen Fonte: Yeah, in other craft news, old Mecklenburg in Charlotte, they went for the hat trick. They've got new packaging, statewide distribution, they're dumping self-distribution and they've got a new IPA.

[00:16:46] Zoe Licata: Yeah, Old Mecklenburg is the oldest craft brewery in Charlotte and, you know, the Charlotte beer scene has really taken off in recent years. So it's nice to see, you know, kind of like the elder statesmen of the city evolve and like breathe some new life. They've got new packaging, which looks great, a new logo. One thing that their COO Jim Birch told me was because they are now reaching statewide distribution through North Carolina's AB network, they're removing a lot of references to Charlotte from their packaging. Which makes sense, you know, there's a lot of cities in North Carolina. So to be positioning yourself as a beer for the whole Tar Heel State rather than just the Queen City made a lot of sense to me. And they've got a new IPA called Unforeseen with the four spelled as F-O-U-R, which is a nod to their adherence to the German Reinheitsgebot, which is the strict purity law that went into effect in 1516. I'm sorry, I'm going into a beer tour guide mode right here. So I'm going to pause myself, but basically all of their beers only have the four main ingredients and still the case with this IPA. So that's going to be a year round flagship for them in addition to their Hefeweizen, their Pilsner. And they've through shifting from self distro to wholesaler distro, they cleaned up their seasonal portfolio, which at one point had as many as eight brands in it.

[00:18:07] Jessen Fonte: Wait, what?

[00:18:08] Zoe Licata: Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, like, there's a lot of beer styles out there, so it makes sense, kind of. But they've come down to five.

[00:18:19] Jessen Fonte: The five seasons?

[00:18:21] Zoe Licata: The Five Seasons. I hope that works out for them. Their seasonal family has been streamlined into their Bock Party Maybach, which they've always made, but they were calling it a Frühbach, which is a super German name. So I think Bock Party is clever and easy to pronounce and easy to remember. And yeah, like you want to have a Bock Party? Sure. That sounds fun. So that's their January to March beer. April to May is Munzler's Vienna Lager. They bring out a new Berliner Weiss. This is their first time making a sour with no brettanomyces, so no risk of cross-contamination. That's in market June and July. Their Mektoberfest, which is their Martin, their Oktoberfest style, is around for August to October. Jim told me that that does so much volume for them. It's one of their top five bestsellers, which is the same at my former employer as well, just a super popular beer style. And then they round out the year with a Dunkel in market from November to January. Super solid portfolio right there. Good for them. These all range in ABV from four to six.

[00:19:25] Jessen Fonte: Yeah. Well, speaking of products that range in the four to probably eight or nine at this point, hard seltzer. It always comes back to hard seltzer. So we talked about it during the board conversation. And now we're going to talk about it again because one of our favorite Wall Street analysts, Kevin Grundy from Jefferies, released his latest Hard Seltzer dashboard. And what we learned there is Hard Seltzer hasn't hit its floor yet. And it hit its lowest point since the start of the pandemic in the fourth quarter of 2022. And I know some folks out there are probably like, well, fourth quarter, you know, seasonal, but since the pandemic, kind of alarming.

[00:20:08] Zoe Licata: Yeah, I love writing about Kevin's hard seltzer dashboards. And I don't know what this says about me, but you know, like last Friday when we were hanging out, my husband was like, what was the highlight of your week? And I was like, well, I wrote this story about hard seltzer. And he was like, that's your highlight? I was like, yeah, it was fun. But yeah, you know, whenever we talk about hard seltzer, and sometimes people will like to say, well, there don't be around forever. And, and the counter to that is, well, they're like about 10% of beer category dollars. That was not true last quarter. And that was not true for all of 2022. Hard seltzers accounted for 7.4% of all dollars spent on beer category products at off-premise retailers tracked by Nielsen IQ for Q4. The segment did not hit 10% at all in all of 2022. Its high point was 9.4% in Q2 of last year. The highest share seltzers ever reached was 10.8% in Q2 of 2021, which was about when the wheels started to fall off the bus a little bit. Now, I don't think that we're going to see the demise of hard seltzer anytime soon. And their declines are starting to accelerate into the start of this year. But I don't know. What's interesting to me from Kevin's report is that White Claw, which lost a lot of share in 21, seems to have stabilized and is now gaining share again. They grew by 177 basis points and now account for 46.8% of all hard seltzer dollars. That's almost half. That's a lot.

[00:21:39] Jessen Fonte: I've been digging through the IRI data and there's a lot of white-claw packages that are doing double-digit growth. And it's pretty impressive to see that sort of claw, for lack of a better term, get clawed back.

[00:21:54] Zoe Licata: Yeah. You know, in 2021, you know, when Truly was launching all of these offshoots, you know, in 2020 and 21, we saw the birth of Truly Tea, Truly Lemonade, Truly Punch, Truly Margarita. White Claw wasn't doing those things and they were losing share, Truly was gaining share. But I think as consumers they probably feel a little bit of whiplash and they probably feel a little overwhelmed. And White Claw has, you know, slowly and steadily added items like that to its portfolio, including Surf, which is their more fruit forward, Surge, which is their imperial hard seltzer. for lack of a better term, and they've got their refreshers, which I think are a little bit more lemonade. You know, like Mark Anthony tried to do the Mike's Hard Lemonade Seltzer, and that didn't really take off so well. But yeah, you know, White Claw kind of, you know, if this were the tortoise and the hare, I think White Claw was the tortoise. And now it's been it.

[00:22:52] Jessen Fonte: Yeah, well, I mean, the hare never quite passed the tortoise, but still.

[00:22:58] Zoe Licata: I forget how that story goes, but it was an answer in the New York Times crossword puzzle today or yesterday.

[00:23:04] Jessen Fonte: Maybe I messed it up. I should know this as the father of a 14-month-old. Yeah. Look, I read the same damn books three to five times each, every day.

[00:23:16] Zoe Licata: What's the sad fish?

[00:23:18] Jessen Fonte: Pout-pout fish.

[00:23:19] Zoe Licata: The pout-pout fish, yeah.

[00:23:21] Jessen Fonte: My favorite is the watermelon seed, though. You know, let's not talk about the watermelon seed, though.

[00:23:25] Zoe Licata: Sounds like a banger.

[00:23:27] Jessen Fonte: It is. I get very dramatic. It's about a crocodile who, he loves watermelon, but he eats a seed. And it's a big issue because, you know, the seed might grow inside his tummy or, you know, vines might come out of his ears. His skin might turn pink. His stomach will stretch. He doesn't want to end up in a fruit salad and neither do I.

[00:23:47] Zoe Licata: High drama.

[00:23:48] Jessen Fonte: It is high drama.

[00:23:50] Zoe Licata: Wow. Well, I look forward to having this in my life one day.

[00:23:53] Jessen Fonte: Yes, I will make sure that the watermelon seed makes its way to you.

[00:23:58] Zoe Licata: So yeah, I think White Claw really kind of the success story here. What was interesting to me was that in the last four weeks, so this was basically the month of January, spirits-based shelters lost share to malt and sugar-based shelters. But we do know from our friends at Ball sharing that, that beer promotional activity was up. I think that's probably a function of that. The run-up to the Super Bowl is a lot of heavy promo in the beer category. I think that's probably what stole a little share there. But High Noon was basically the only spirits-based seltzer business in town for a while. Their shares declined. They were 8% of the overall segment last August. But in this last report, they've now declined to 5.7. So they lost more than 2% of shares as other brands like Neutral from Anheuser-Busch gained speed.

[00:24:51] Jessen Fonte: I think Truly Vodka is doing fairly well out of the gate too, as consumers try that. So we'll see if they can hang on. Who knows?

[00:25:00] Zoe Licata: Yeah, who knows. Other interesting tidbits from here, Constellation Brand's Corona Hard Seltzer gained two basis points of share, but really their share has declined quite a bit. They're now just 1.1% of all hard seltzer sales when they were a top five.

[00:25:19] Jessen Fonte: Yeah, well, Brewbound insiders can read those stories. They can also read about in Virginia. Lawmakers are considering legislation that would prevent retailers from merchandising products like Hard Mountain Dew, Simply Spike, Fresca Mix, The Beast Unleashed. with the non-alcoholic versions of those. And if they're taking those out of the beer aisle, they'd have to have special signage. So that story is up there. We've got some news on direct-to-consumer shipping efforts in Texas and Illinois, RTD tax equivalents and market access bills in California and Arizona. All of that is up at Brewbound.com. You can go read those. And with that, here's our featured interview. Let's bring in Deb Gabor, CEO of Sol Marketing. Deb, AB gave up its exclusivity over alcohol advertising during the Super Bowl, and that's really opened the door to a lot of new entrants this year, beer and otherwise. So looking back at the beverage alcohol ads during the game, who do you see as the winners and who do you see as the losers here?

[00:26:29] Deb Gabor: Overall, my impression of Super Bowl advertising this year was meh. I give it probably a solid two and a half stars. I thought that the ad for Crown Royal with Dave Grohl was interesting. He shared some interesting and fun facts about Canada that, frankly, I didn't really know. What's ironic is we have Dave Grohl talking about what comes from Canada, and I'm pretty sure he's from Ohio. So that one was interesting. It was sort of fun. The Bud Light commercial featuring Miles Teller and his wife with the hold music and the dancing, you know, showed us that Bud Light is easy to drink, easy to hold, and when you're on an interminable hold time, you know, that's a really good time to crack a cold beer. So like really focused kind of on the core value proposition of Bud Light being like a light, easy to drink beer. I felt like one that left me scratching my head was the one with Serena Williams, I think for Remy Martin. For the first, I would say like 90% of the time spent watching that commercial, I was like, what am I listening to? What am I seeing here? What's going on? Definitely not really memorable. I know Super Bowl's past, we were looking for beverage companies to come up with something memorable. They were things that we talked about. They touched on a lot of humor, absurdity, like going all the way back to the frogs, you know, Budweiser. still memorable and something that we talk about and definitely like iconic advertising. One ad that really stuck out to me, and I guess this one is from Anheuser-Busch, was the the Michelob Ultra ad also featuring Serena. It was the new members day at the club ad. That one definitely got some good laughs out of the people that I was with and that's one that people are talking about. And The head-scratcher of the evening, besides that Remy Martin ad, I would say, was the one for Blue Moon, which was an outing from the Coors Company. So you had Miller Lite up against Coors Light, and then it turns out it was a Blue Moon ad. So clever way to weave multiple brands into an ad, but I'm not really sure what my takeaway was supposed to be. just, you know, maybe broad based brand awareness. So, you know, I think Super Bowl advertising for everybody, not just beverage companies, but also snack foods, automotive brands, entertainment, etc. Maybe it's jumped the shark, it's less fun than it used to be.

[00:29:01] Zoe Licata: Yeah I'm glad you mentioned the Miller Coors ad. So we know that the Molson Coors beverage company owns all of those brands but I don't know that most consumers know that. So what did we achieve here other than just informing people that there's like a large hegemony that owns. most of the beer brands in this country.

[00:29:20] Deb Gabor: Well, I don't know if that was even a takeaway for consumers that all of those brands were owned by the same company. And it's a really good point that you bring up. We're educated consumers. You know, I work in the marketing world. And so these are things that I think about, I talk about, it crosses my radar all the time in trade media and stuff like that. But the general consumer probably has no understanding of that, just like they probably don't know what are all of the brands that are sort of, you know, in the house of Anheuser-Busch and whatever their name is, like, general consumers don't know this. Advertisers largely use the Super Bowl as a place to sort of establish broad-based awareness and at an average of about $7 million a spot for just the media, so not even including the production costs and whatever sort Sol Marketing and PR you do around your Super Bowl ad. You know, maybe this was an example of the company really just banking on the fact of like getting more exposure for all three brands, potentially just making people aware or even reminding them that those brands are even there. I mean, you have like 100 million viewers plus, it's a good opportunity for broad based awareness, but I think that the regular everyday consumer, unless they are an investor or, you know, they're people like us who work in industry, they probably have no awareness of the connection to all of these brands together. So, you know, interesting take.

[00:30:44] Super Bowl: You mentioned that there was the two separate ads that featured Serena Williams and they were two different Bevalk brands. Does that come across as confusing to consumers at all when there's like these big figures in multiple different ads, especially that have potential crossover?

[00:31:01] Deb Gabor: I think so. I mean, I can just kind of go off anecdotally off of, you know, what was my experience of watching the ad with other people last night, you know, it kind of left people a little bit confused. When brands align themselves with a celebrity, like a celebrity spokesperson, really what they're looking for is to align the values and beliefs of their brand with the values and beliefs of that spokesperson behind it. I mean, the fact that they were both beverage ads, beverage brands, it's a little bit confusing because she's a superstar athlete and conceivably not somebody who who may be a voracious consumer of alcoholic beverages. Anyway, her brand seems to me more aligned with the Michelob Ultra brand, you know, Michelob Ultra, like really being seen as something that you know, if you're an athlete, if you're a person whose body is a temple and you also want to consume beer, like this is a brand that sort of aligns with what your goals are for your body. So it seemed like a better fit with that and less of a fit with the other, especially given the esoteric storytelling nature of the other ad, which again, you know, unless I had referred to my notes right before this interview, I probably wouldn't have even remembered what brand it was associated with. So, you know, when brands pick a celebrity that they want to align themselves with, they really are looking for that halo of association with that celebrity. And a lot of the celebrity spots this year honestly seemed like somebody left a video camera on in the green room of a Hollywood awards show. And there were random pairings of people and random attachment of celebrities with certain brands. And it ended up being like kind of a mishmash of messaging and brand association as far as I'm concerned.

[00:32:57] Jessen Fonte: It's funny that Anheuser-Busch gives up its exclusivity. And yet we still talk a lot about Anheuser-Busch because they're still a part of this

[00:33:05] Deb Gabor: I think they had three minutes. They had like three whole minutes worth of advertising that was there. Yeah.

[00:33:10] Jessen Fonte: Yeah. It was like three minutes, 30 seconds. And on USA Today's Ad Meter, Bud Light's ad with Miles and Kaylee Teller broke the top 10. They were in at number six. And this was really a departure for Bud Light in what we've seen from the past. You mentioned some of the humorous ads that have been out there, and it seemed to work at least on that rating scale. Why do you think this approach was successful in that regard?

[00:33:37] Deb Gabor: The ad itself, you know, featured, like, really appealing people who were easy on the eyes. The idea of being on this, like, lengthened hold time is something that we as general consumers have, you know, I've experienced that, you know, being on an unreasonable hold time. It was, like, relatable. It seemed like a little bit of a slice of life. It wasn't absurd. And, you know, I think that the advertising was like very, very close in to the value proposition of the brand, you know, and I think that that's probably what made it popular with people. There was nothing to dislike about it, right? There was nothing controversial. There was nothing that left anybody really confused. And I think it's emblematic of what all advertisers were doing in the Super Bowl, with the exception of the Jesus ad. They were staying out of the fray of public opinion. I mean, we are we are divided socially, politically. We're concerned about economics as people. And, you know, people are looking for comfort and they're going to find it in a cold beer and some snack foods. And I think that that's really what advertisers were banking on this year.

[00:34:50] Zoe Licata: I had no idea Jesus had such a large media budget.

[00:34:54] SPEAKER_??: Yeah.

[00:34:54] Zoe Licata: But speaking of budget, you know, the investment to run one of these ads is huge. Who do you think got their money's worth?

[00:35:02] Deb Gabor: in the beverage world, specifically. I mean, I'm going to say Bud Light with that like, you know, not super memorable, but not offensive or divisive ad. Of course, like as I was preparing my wrap ups and roundups of Super Bowl commercials, I'm reading what other people are writing about and almost without exception, people put that in the you know, their list of top 10s or top fives or whatever. So I think that they definitely got their money's worth out of that. And maybe just for the fact that it didn't really bring anything all that interesting or all that new, and maybe they got their money's worth out of that, you know, in a couple of ways. One was like the ad itself, And you know, the placement of the ad and the timing of the ad, the content of the ad being like, really not risky. And then look at all the great PR value that they're getting. And they got a ton of PR value leading up to the Super Bowl and then coming out. So I think in the Brevige world, they probably really got their money's worth. I'm curious about the Crown Royal ad. I'm curious about the Remy Martin ad, you know, if they really got any good, like, ongoing earned media PR juice out of those. I've seen both of those ads be panned pretty widely. And if you ascribe to the idea that all press is good press, then yeah, maybe they got their money's worth out of it. But, you know, definitely the winner is that Bud Light ad for being not so special, I think.

[00:36:34] Jessen Fonte: And, and Heisler Bush didn't even have to pay for exclusivity. And here, you know, people are talking about their ads. So, well, Deb, thanks for doing this. We really appreciate the time. Thank you. All right. And let's bring in our next guest. Joining us now is Mario Natarelli, managing partner at Emblem, a New York City branding agency. Thanks for being here, Mario. My pleasure, Justin. Mario, this is the year that AB gave up its exclusivity. The door is open. We saw all these other alcoholic beverage companies rush in. And, you know, we just had Deb Gabor on to talk about, you know, some winners and losers. And I'd love to get your thoughts, too, on who are the winners and losers coming out of this big game advertising.

[00:37:21] Sol Marketing: Well, you know, in our annual study of the most intimate brands in the world, beverage brands typically perform below average. So all of them could be doing more. What I took from the ads that I saw, I thought that the ones that generated the most conversation debates probably did the best. So I guess that would be, you know, the Miller. Sam Adams was definitely a standout for me. Those brands, the Miller Molson one, I think were the two most dominant ones for, from my perspective.

[00:37:51] Jessen Fonte: I'd like to get a little deeper on the Molson Coors ad because there was a lot of hype around that one coming in. And they really pulled a swerve on everyone. Everybody thought it was their light lager brands, Coors Light, Miller Lite. But at the end, it turns out it's an ad, I guess, for craft beer, which is Blue Moon, which they also own. So do swerves like that typically play well?

[00:38:15] Sol Marketing: You know, I think in the Super Bowl, when, you know, it's quite a bombastic experience of advertising, I think words like that make sense. I wouldn't recommend that that's a long term campaign that is going to work. And I don't think it was probably intended to, but for the moment, you know, certainly something that throws a bit of a twist, I think was welcome and spontaneous.

[00:38:38] Zoe Licata: So this year we saw messaging from Bev Alkbrands that runs the gamut from, you know, fun and kind of silly, you know, like we saw with Sam Adams and Michelob Ultra, to like inspiring and esoteric and very high-minded, like what we saw from like Remy Martin and Budweiser in a way. This isn't anything new. People have been kind of doing this kind of strange dichotomy for a long time, but which strategy do you think pays off in the long run?

[00:39:03] Sol Marketing: Well, we believe that ultimately brands succeed if they connect emotionally. So I think the ads that do that best are the ones that ultimately succeed. The Super Bowl, though, is this moment in time when there's so many eyeballs and so much attention. What's happening lately seems to be a trend that is going for either the quick laugh or using celebrities and novel, memorable ways to generate either buzz or conversation. So I don't know if that's a typical way for brands to communicate. It's kind of this circus event and the advertising tends to reflect that. My personal favorite on the beverage side was the Crown Royal one as a Canadian. I thought that one was fun with Dave Grohl. That was fun.

[00:39:46] Super Bowl: I like that one a lot. The big story really within the BevElk world this year was that AB had given up exclusivity. And so we were kind of waiting to see what brands were going to come fill in that space. But in our conversation that we just had with Deb, she said Bud Light's ad was still kind of one of the best ones in making kind of a bang with their buck. In your opinion, did you see any BevElk bands that kind of took over the spot for AB or were they still still king?

[00:40:14] Sol Marketing: I would agree with you. The Bud Light one, I think, was probably one of my favorites, other than maybe the Crown. If I were to rank them, I'd guess Sam Adams won just in terms of execution and overall kind of fun and comedy. But the Bud Light one, I thought, was just excellent. Fantastic ad. So I would put them as, you know, one of the standouts.

[00:40:35] Jessen Fonte: What was it about that ad? Because it really is a move away from humor for Bud Light that we've seen in the past, you know, to something completely different. You know, is it just that it's so relatable and potentially opens them up to an audience that, you know, they really haven't spoken to in the past, which would be female consumers?

[00:40:56] Sol Marketing: Yeah, I think that and the kind of subtlety of it, that it was artful in this kind of you know, sort of serendipitous moment between a guy and a girl and sort of hold music. I just thought it was very understated. It wasn't, you know, super cheesy or trying too hard. And I thought that restraint was great and, you know, really stood out in contrast to the kind of full on-ness of many of the ads that you saw.

[00:41:25] Super Bowl: It's refreshing.

[00:41:26] Sol Marketing: Yeah, it felt almost classy, dare I say it.

[00:41:29] Zoe Licata: But it included the product in a way that everybody can imagine themselves, you know, enjoying. Sometimes you watch a commercial and you're like, I don't even know what the heck this was for.

[00:41:38] Sol Marketing: I would almost watch a movie with those two, right? It felt cinematic in a way that, you know, they had a real bond. There was real chemistry. You could feel it. And they're obviously great, talented people. So you could get it, but it didn't feel forced or heavy.

[00:41:53] Zoe Licata: No, no. And the dog was great. So our company is based right outside of Boston in Newton, Massachusetts, and Zoe and I both live in Mass. Justin has departed for Iowa, but the Boston beer ad kind of has some divisiveness among our people. Zoe, chief among them, who has some big feelings about it. So it played in a space that, you know, Bud Light and Budweiser have done in years past where it's a little funny and a little silly and you're a big fan. So what about this landed for you? Because I was watching the Sam Adams socials over the weekend as they were rolling out content related and they were, they were getting hit pretty hard from some consumers who maybe didn't appreciate them saying that New York does in fact not suck.

[00:42:38] Sol Marketing: Well, then they've succeeded on a couple of levels, right? I guess they're delivering to the to the mass audience and they're creating this kind of like, I guess, counter conversation that probably benefits them in the long run. You know, you can't take this too seriously, but I thought it was just really well written, well executed and clever. I hadn't thought of it from a Boston perspective, though, so I can appreciate this or from a Massachusetts perspective.

[00:43:04] Super Bowl: I respected the humor. I get it. I respected the Kevin Garnett reference, really bringing everyone together. But I'm not going to ever support a Yankee Red Sox hug saying we love New York.

[00:43:19] Sol Marketing: Well, I can't do it. As a Blue Jay fan, I feel you guys could both go down as far as I'm concerned.

[00:43:28] Zoe Licata: Fair, fair. That's funny. I grew up in Yankee territory and was in a long distance relationship with my now husband for a while and he's from Mass. So he would come visit me in New Jersey and wear his Red Sox hat. And he got way more crap from Yankee fans than I've ever seen Boston fans give a New York fan.

[00:43:46] Sol Marketing: Well, the most unrealistic thing was that bleacher scene. I mean, there's just no way that ever happens. So that made it really hilarious for me.

[00:43:54] Zoe Licata: Yeah. I assume you've seen the rest of the, your cousin from Boston spots. So you're familiar with this character and his misadventures. Yeah. They, uh, they invited Zoe and I to their annual business planning meeting in the fall where they share their brand plans with their wholesaler network. And the actor who plays the cousin was there and the line to take pictures with him, a stretch around the room.

[00:44:15] Sol Marketing: Oh my.

[00:44:16] Zoe Licata: Yeah.

[00:44:17] Sol Marketing: He's a hero.

[00:44:18] Zoe Licata: He's a hero.

[00:44:21] Jessen Fonte: Well, we're the day after the Super Bowl now, and all of the rankings are coming out, you know, the USA Today Ad Meter, Adweek and AdAge have their, you know, best and worst. So when we look at these rankings from these sources, do we need to look at it from the eye of industry folks giving their input here? Or how much does this speak for the casual viewer at home?

[00:44:47] Sol Marketing: I think if you were buying the ads, if you were paying for them, you'd probably want a combination of both as you would in any creative endeavor, right? Some critical acclaim and obviously mass appeal. Ultimately, you want these to move the needle on sales. So, you know, that's what the buyers are looking for. As someone who makes them, I think you want that balance of appreciation from the industry and generally positive conversation and impact in the mass audience.

[00:45:16] Zoe Licata: How hard is it to thread that needle?

[00:45:19] Sol Marketing: Yeah, very.

[00:45:23] Zoe Licata: I feel from having, and we talked about this with Deb a little bit, and we've talked about it amongst ourselves, watching the Molson Coors ad with the Miller Lite versus Coors Light versus, oh, just kidding, it's Blue Moon. To me, that commercial was really for their wholesaler network. And the way our industry works is that's your biggest audience. That's who sells your product. They're your number one customer. But I don't know that this really connected for drinkers because I don't know how many of them know about the internal rivalry between these bands. How many people care? Like, I'm not really sure how much that will have borne out, whatever it was that the brief said. And they didn't, they kept that under wraps. We didn't, we didn't see that in advance.

[00:46:06] Sol Marketing: You know, that statement, I think, is fair for maybe more than half of the ads. You're wondering often when you're watching these, what was the brief and what just happened there? You know, that particular ad, I was watching it with others, and I saw my wife reacting to the fighting in a very kind of what is going on way. You know, she did not track with it and then got annoyed by the end with the twist. So they lost her early and just watching it viscerally was interesting, seeing her kind of disengage.

[00:46:34] Zoe Licata: That's how I felt too. I said, this is so violent.

[00:46:38] Super Bowl: Why is this necessary? I think I might be generalizing a bit, but I think particularly with the female audience, it felt like just male ego fight type thing, but represented as two brands. And that's going to turn you off quickly.

[00:46:56] Jessen Fonte: Which is really odd for them, given their recent marketing that you've seen for a product like Blue Moon, or was it Coors Light, the bra commercial?

[00:47:06] Sol Marketing: Yeah, I was reading some of the critical commentary after the Super Bowl as, as we do. And some of what I read that was different is that bad ads were almost succeeding by design, that in a way they're reaching for this kind of miss almost generates better conversation than succeeding, which I thought was a very distorted, weird way. And could you imagine if that's ultimately what these creative directors are seeking? It's kind of a horrible way to think of it. But you can sort of understand it when you watch something and go, wait, what just happened there? And how does that work?

[00:47:48] Jessen Fonte: I think the YouTube ad is what everybody was thinking on that one.

[00:47:52] Sol Marketing: Yeah, so odd on so many levels. And it didn't help that it got shortened, right? Like somebody made a film that then they cut to 15 seconds, which was a disaster on so many levels.

[00:48:04] SPEAKER_??: Yeah.

[00:48:04] Jessen Fonte: At the end of the day, you know, you're right. It's sales that matter. So we won't know for sure who the real winners and losers are until we see the data and whether there's an uptick in sales for any of these products. So I guess we'll find out.

[00:48:21] Sol Marketing: You know, what's interesting in, you know, our studies show that, especially in beverages, right, they did better during COVID. A lot of brands improved their intimacy during COVID. And many are now facing this new reality post COVID, where that bubble has, you know, burst or shrunk, and they're seeking to find or gain growth back. And I think you're starting to feel a little bit of that scramble, or at least you see it in the communications, it looks at times desperate.

[00:48:51] Jessen Fonte: Well, Mario, thank you for sort of taking us through the mind of somebody that's in that space. My pleasure. This was fun. Yeah.

[00:49:00] Zoe Licata: Oh, good.

[00:49:00] Jessen Fonte: We appreciate it. Be well, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, guys. And that's our show for this week. Thanks to Deb and Mario for taking the time to chat about all the ads with us. Thanks to Zoe and Jess for all their hard work this week. Thanks to Joe, our one man audio team. And thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week.