Bud Lite Copies Miller Chill Salt and Lime

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You know what's so boring about blogging. The fact that marketers never do anything different. You could have had the same story ten years ago, and the only thing that would be different would be the names of the products and the names of the people copying each other. Is this what they teach in business school, or after, in business. Where I went to school, you always flunked when you copied. Why is this lesson now lost?

I don't know what Budweiser's VP, Innovation Pat McGauley and VP-Trademark Brands Dan McHugh's are talking about regarding this product launch. Nothing about research is "extensive." It just takes you up to where the road ends. People then stop their search for the trump card when the price gets higher - the cost of doing more profitable homework. (The saying goes, "People stop chasing their dreams when the price gets too high.")

Why copy Miller? Go past them. That's what Miller Brewing's New Ventures Director Dave Krishock and I did back in the day. While Budweiser was busy chasing another phantom called 'dry beer' Dave and I discovered the concept of Cold-filtered Miller Genuine Draft instead - now the most popular brand in Miller's portfolio.

A product launch worth spending time on would net 10-20 share, not the .3 to .5% sought here. Maybe that's why McKinsey & Company reports that despite solid balance sheets and healthy bottom lines the CPG industry has lost its glow and the executives in it are wondering where their growth will come from.

Miller Brewing Limps Into Battle - Beer Wars Off To An Impotent Start With A Desperate Stretch

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Give me a break. Miller using Dalamtions (a spoof on A-B Super Bowl ads? Don't they know more advertising is forgotten than remembered) to "nip at Bud Lite's heels." The first shot in a new beer war should have been some real trash talk like, "Yo momma's breaths so bad her man Bud got wizer and split."

Here's the 411. This is about the most useless ad worth watching that was ever created. How many of us ever actually saw our girlfriends get into another boy's car. The angst between beer, love and girl is such a disconnected thread that only a beer marketer could conceive it in his or her wildest dream. AND IT'S A MALE DOG, SO NOW WE'RE TALKING GAY! Miller and agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty blow chunks every way imaginable here.

This battle has no intensity. Everything about the effort says executives at Miller and Bud (hey, maybe they should start a sports restaurant called "Miller and Bud's" - let's be friends not enemy's since we're all sold at the same places anyway - you heard it hear first - "that's strategy") met on the golf course and decided to start a little contrived (remember what I say, the problem with most ads today is that they are either too obvious or too contrived) conflageration to help some advertising and media buddies in need make their next car payments.

These are the kinds of things you do when you're Miller and don't have something important to say about your product. They need a more highly consumer-desired and differentiating reason-for-being. Trading shots across the bow to generate buzz is about the same as Crispin Porter + Bogusky shooting from the hip with Orville Dedenbacher. What a useless way to waste money. How many people is Miller helping to make car payments with this campaign in relation to incremental beer sales. These guys aren't even good trash talkers. "Keep up the bad work!?"

Give me a break. That copy is not even worth the back page of USA Today's sports section.