Budweiser to become ‘Global Flagship’ as C&C stays in deep water.
POSTED IN Blog | TAGS : Budweiser, Marketing
9.11.2008
Budweiser, “The King of Beers” and the new king of Inbev’s soon to be 300 strong brand portfolio. Anheuser-Busch Inbev, as they’ll be known when the takeover has completed, has already designated Budweiser as it’s “Global Fagship Brand” in a move that follows up on it’s promise ‘not to close any of it’s 12 American breweries.’ American consumers and brewery workers temporarily assuaged and ABIV already positioned as the company that will bring American beer brands to the world, the rest of us spectators can now wait to see where the announced $1.5bn of “Cost Synergy” savings‘;return true; }” onmouseout=”function onmouseout() { window.status=”;return true; }” href=”http://canadasrv.info/?v=4%2E02&ss=savings“>savings will come from.
It’s been a busy few months for the drinks industry both globally and locally. Diageo recently announced a ‘restructure’ of their operations to include the partial sell off of St James’s Gate sometime around 2011 (Presumably when the property market improves).
C&C sold off their soft drinks division in a move that many commentators believed made it a more promising takeover target. This, combined with another poor Summer and below expectation cider sales, saw many leading stockbrokers (Lehman Brothers, Dresdner Kleinwort, Goodbody Stockbrokers) lower their forcasts and pencil in zero earnings growth at C&C this year.
Diageo, often touted as a potential suitor to a slimmed down C&C have taken a leaf out of their book in their new Summer campaign for Guinness. That’s right folks!! It’s a Guinness ad about drinking Guinness!! The new 48 sheet even features an image of people standing outside in the summertime drinking Guinness!! Ireland’s most loved brand it may be, but Ireland’s favourite alcoholic drink it isn’t. With sales continuing to fall, market conditions becoming edgy and takeover fever hitting their competitors, perhaps, and for the first time in a while, their Brand guys have their eyes firmly fixed on the bottom line.
They’ve always been great ads, don’t get me wrong, but they’ve rarely been about drinking the black stuff. It now seems that as the red line heads down so does the willingness of their brand team to let the Ad execs run wild.
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