Tears in My Beer

This story came in my email from Tom Taylor. It just goes to show ya, there are many, many factors that people use when making advertising decisions. My take on this is that it is a wrong move, because short term gains may turn into longer term loss of market share:


Anheuser-Busch gives radio some very bad news – it’s whacking its ad budgets.

A reader mentioned last week that this might be coming down, but the Cone of Silence was in place until now – as AdAge reports that “one of the marketing industry’s biggest proponents of radio advertising is significantly slashing spending for the second half of this year.” You probably know the St. Louis giant is under pressure from Belgium’s InBev – which wants to buy the giant brewer, with or without the Busch family’s blessings. (Amazingly, the Busches don’t have voting control or any of that handy super-voting stock to help it repel invaders.) AdAge says Clear Channel and Emmis have already been informed of the change in direction, and Emmis-Chicago market manager Marv Nyren says A-B has cut out its spot buys for the rest of the year – but not its already-committed sponsorships for events and concerts. One question that comes to mind is whether A-B’s turnabout affects its sports advertising budget. The really crummy thing for radio is that August Busch IV swears they’re not cutting their overall marketing in the face of the hostile takeover attempt, and are in fact growing it – just not in radio. You’ll be seeing plenty of Budweiser ads in the NBC coverage of the Beijing Olympics, and successful viral ads like “Swear Jar” are like gold. We’ll see if this strategic switch away from radio makes Anheuser-Busch look like (ahem) real men of genius.