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.

Look, No Hands! K-C's Bathroom of the Future

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No slight intended but here's Richard Thorne, director of the washroom business at K-C, demonstrating the JRT Electronic Coreless. Ho hum. This is all so boring. Marketers such as P&G are looking for real lifechanging experiences to catalog as innovations and add to their new brand portfolio. If you were Kohler for example, you'd wonder how Americans would use the restroom in the future if their were no such thing as a toilet bowl or tank - hence no need for paper. Voices in the bathroom, 400 mph blow dryers and automatic paper dispensers just push the obvious to the nth degree. And no, the answer does not rest with moist toilet tissue. Exploration in perianal hygiene and moist tissue has been around since well before Tom Hatch and Mennen 36 years ago. Ho hum. How would we use the restroom if we were not allowed to use paper. Now THAT would lead to a lifechanging innovation! Would K-C be afraid to look under that rock?