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.

"Search Satisfaction" strikes 9 out of 10 marketers

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Are you a victim of SEARCH SATISFACTION. Some years ago Miller Brewing was looking for a new brand idea and stopped searching when they found emerging Japanese dry beers - beers with less beer aftertaste. Have you ever met a heavy beer drinker with a problem with beer's aftertaste. Miller was chasing a solution looking for a problem. I led them to launch Cold-filtered Miller Genuine Draft instead, arguably their most popular brand today.

A marketer in your company for example is LOOKING FOR a solution to a problem. And when they find one they feel comfortable with, they look no further. Search satisfaction also aflicts doctors, who when diagnosing problems, stop when they think they have the right answer. Looking no further, they later find they are wrong an uncomfortably higher number of times than you and I would like to admit.

My specialty is positioning brands. I have hit a good many home runs. I have found that brands are like ten speed bikes. They have many gears they never use because search satisfaction stops marketers from doing more homework. There was a Renaissance Period in marketing. People did more digging then. Now we just shoot at commodities from the hip. My grandfather had a farm. My dad had a garden. I have a can opener. So my grandfather was much better at raising brands. Today’s CEOs just jettison brands, managers and agencies - like goals - people abandon their dreams when the price gets too high - when a little homework would have turned that flat C student back into a polished A. Another way to look at this is a way to turn mature earnings businesses back into rapid growth companies or how to reverse the effects of mature product lifecycles. I’d like to trade blogroll links. Can you toss one in my hat? Is that possible?