{"id":17,"date":"2005-04-11T22:03:45","date_gmt":"2005-04-12T06:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/?p=17"},"modified":"2005-04-28T22:57:14","modified_gmt":"2005-04-29T06:57:14","slug":"designate-a-drinker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/designate-a-drinker\/","title":{"rendered":"designate a drinker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anheuser Busch, possibly in a marketing move meant to emulate the famous “New” Coke<\/a>(tm) efforts of 1985, has introduced a new adult beverage, B-to-the-E. The new drink rolled out nationally in January<\/a> this year, after successful marketing trials in New York, LA, Boston, Miami and other test markets.<\/p>\n

This is a slim 10-ounce can that contains, in effect, the ingredients of that yummy rave drink Red Bull ™, and good ol’ Budweiser ™ beer. It contains caffeine, guarana and ginseng — a sort of healthy wake-up drink mixed with beer, 6.6 percent alcohol by volume. (I must have the turbo version. Web articles<\/a> say it is a 4.5 percent alcohol beverage.)<\/p>\n

Red Bull ™ has a healthful, uh, healthy, 70 to 90 per cent of the energy drink market <\/a>— about $1.6 billion according to SellingPower.com. While describing this success, they admit it doesn’t taste very good: I’ve had it and it makes me long for orange Triaminic ™ Cough Syrup, which is flavored to prevent not-very-sick kids from malingering at home. <\/p>\n

“You’ll need that orange cough syrup every four hours.”
\n“That’s OK, Mom. My throat feels better. I think I’ll go to school and take that test I haven’t studied for.”<\/p>\n

I can see why anyone might try RB once, but repeat buying is a mystery. (There is no nicotine in any of these products.) Apparently, RB supports extreme sporting events and has a lot of word-of-mouth buzz marketing. Think young; think Tony Hawke fans. RB is often served as a mixer with vodka. (Aha, you gotta cut that candy sweetness with something.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, Anheuser Busch ™ and Coca-Cola ™ have tried to enter this market for years to break the Bull’s dominance.<\/p>\n

Apparently, B-to-the-E is the latest AB attempt. The sweetness of the product makes me think it is aimed at those younger drinkers <\/a>whose number of years being of drinking age can be measuresd with a calendar or maybe a stopwatch.<\/p>\n

The editor of All About Beer<\/strong> magazine says “You get a little bit drunk but it keeps you alert. ” Basically, she thinks this is as dumb an idea as I do. Rather than paraphrasing it read her beer marketing insights<\/a> for yourself. Or see the allaboutbeer beer expert’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The large grocery store where I bought B-to-the-E had NO six-packs for sale, only single cans. Do they know something about the product that a potential customer would want to know?<\/p>\n

Grudgingly, I have tasted the new brew. It is supposed to have a berry, not beery, taste. Good news: it looks exactly like Budweiser ™, foamy head and all. As a beer drinker, you get that expectation of a decent — maybe fine — thirst-quenching brew. Bad news: it tastes bitter spackled<\/a> over with sweetness. The contrasting flavors make it hard to pin down. Mixed news: I now want to take a nap and sinultaneously stay up all night and go clubbing. (Like my new ID? I am<\/strong> of drinking age.)<\/p>\n

For me, I’m going to remain a happy consumer of any Anheuser product that doesn’t taste like soda pop. Or cough syrup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anheuser Busch, possibly in a marketing move meant to emulate the famous “New” Coke(tm) efforts of 1985, has introduced a new adult beverage, B-to-the-E. The new drink rolled out nationally in January this year, after successful marketing trials in New York, LA, Boston, Miami and other test markets. This is a slim 10-ounce can that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}