"This beer tastes good enough but the packaging is so great" -steve kream

I saw an ad tonight for Sam Adams on MSNBC right before the women’s hockey final. It was basically 30 seconds of folks from the company telling us that we are mistaken when we think they are a big company. They are actually really small. In fact, they are less than 1% of the U.S. beer market.

How big is that beer market again? According to IBIS World Americans spent just over 26 billion dollars on beer in 2009. So they are telling us that their gross revenue is somewhere south of like 260 million dollars? I still want to give them the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to post the ad up so I went online and spent some time on the Sam Adams site and then youtube. I came across all kinds of nicely produced ads but I couldn’t find this one. Whatever the actual revenue is, if you have this many nicely produced ads and nice media placement, you aren’t that small. I don’t think anyone is really fooled by Sam Adams so I won’t belabor the point but it does broach the subject of how success is tough on a beer brand.

Success for a small brewery can be a double edged sword. It brings the sales that the company deserves but it threatens to isolate the company from its core demographic that appreciates a smaller brand and helped them through the fledgling start-up phase. This is especially tough in the alcohol market. A lot of consumers are willing to wear Levis but won’t be see with a Budweiser.

This is true of spirits as well. New Deal Vodka, a small distillery in Portland, Oregon, has a particularly novel approach the success “problem.” New Deal Vodka’s packaging and marketing really focuses on the local angle. The company sources locally and has organic vodkas as part of its product portfolio. So after all this stress on the craft element New Deal writes on the back of the label “Of course, eventually, we plan to rule the world.” Seriously, just tell people that someday you hope to expand and do well. I think it’s crucial to be honest with folks and let know your intentions and who you are. You really can’t fake the funk.

Nike releasing Ndamukong Suh AF1s

No more Adidas for Ndamakong. The projected first overall pick in the upcoming NFL draft recently signed an endorsement deal with Nike after wearing Adidas for four years at the University of Nebraska. Nike's move to ink Suh shows a shrewdness on their part. Depsite the fact that defensive linemen don't always get love, Suh is sure to be a game changer on Sundays.

The shoes are no joke. My pick is the white on white with "HOUSE OF SPEARS" lazer etched by the heel by his college number, 93. Ndamukong means house of spears in Suh's father's native language. Everyone knows that white on white AF1s go with everything.



The second pair is Nebraska red with what looks like a metallic finish. There are a nice tribute to his college years wearing Adidas.

The Future is Here

I’ve seen the future and this is what it looks like. It’s pretty clear at this point that cannabis legalization, at least for medical purposes, is happening and cannabis is becoming commoditized. For those of you that didn't take marketing 101, this is when branding becomes especially important. It's time to start approaching the process of branding cannabis in a way that is more sophisticated than the average college kid playing xbox might. I’ve read about dispensaries in the bay area that aspire to be the Dean and Deluca of the business in terms of the overall experience. This, however, is on another level altogether.

The Cannabis Wizards, a dispensary in Aspen, enlisted Quaker City Mercantile, a creative agency, to develop an all-inclusive branding campaign for its dispensary. You may know QCM from it's work with Hendrick’s Gin.

QCM came up with a stellar name in Silverpeak Apothecary. Silverpeak sounds nice and is a great way to connect with the local Aspen community. The word apothecary has strong ties with associations of craft and care. It harks back to an old time when life was simpler and when people looked to the earth to alleviate symptoms and cure illness. Let’s face it, all this branding is perfect for the demographic buying cannabis from a dispensary in Aspen, Colorado. You can think of this as the Kiehls NYC of the medical cannabis world.

The packaging and labels are not so shabby either. They've taken great strides in presenting cannabis as a legitimate product and the dispensary as a real purveyor medicinal herbs that is interested in holistic health. I'm interested to see if this trend continues and if we will see this type of branding buttress the overall legalization movement.

For the complete story please check out Quaker City Mercantile. Also, thanks to AdRants for tipping me off.

Samsung Olympics Viral

In my mind the Olympics is providing an opportunity to produce creative and effective ads that better than super bowl ads. This is a totally off the wall viral video that Ads of the World hipped me to. Halfway through I thought it was pretty corny but the ending did not disappoint.

The viral gift that keeps on giving

New Balance is launching a new viral video campaign that will feature a new short video a day for 365 days starting today. The videos are really short, 15 to 30 seconds, and will deal with the theme of balance. The videos will also feature New Balance users and exhibit parts of their lives. We are already aware of several brands using viral videos and social media to get closer to become more intimate with consumers. This is an exciting and ambitious campaign that we get to watch play out over the next year.

The very first one shows some robots stitching up a grey 574. Not a bad start.


The link for the videos is here www.newbalance365.com

Brandweek is reporting some more details about the campaign.

Greening a brand takes a commitment.

A lot of companies like to talk about how they care about the environment. And a lot companies are hollow in their commitment and their ads demonstrate as much. I get annoyed when I see chevron ads reminding me to quit wasting electricity. Why? So I’ll feel better about wasting gas?



Or even better, telling me I should bike to work 3 days out of the year. That’s a whopping 1.1% of total work days in a year. Really, that is Chevron's commitment? This doesn't even mention the fact that Chevron is reflecting the call to action on us and not making any commitment on its own. I understand that Chevron is in the business of selling oil so my suggestion is finding some other way to go green. Assuming, you know, that they do care.



The cynic in me can’t help but think that marketing executives are sitting around saying things like, “My daughter keeps talking about some green movement. How do we get this money? Let’s call the agency and get a new logo with a leaf on it.” I’m sure if works in general but there has to be a better way to integrate green initiative into a company’s strategy and then brag about it in your marketing.

I’m not rewriting the book here and companies do this. I was reminded of how it can be done well with a recent Sun Chip ad. The Frito Lay subsidiary enlisted Robert Maya to direct a great ad that simply demonstrates the company’s new compost-able packaging. Great, an ad that gives me something tangible this company is doing to be greener.



Huh? What’s that at the end? http://www.greeneffect.com ? Wow they are working with the National Geographic. From a snack food company’s perspective can you think of a better co-branding partner than NatGeo? Laawdy this campaign is winning from an integrated communications standpoint.

For the record, this isn’t new for Sun Chips. They’ve been this kind of thing for a minute. Here’s another example of an ad from 2008 that I think is great.