2012 SABRE AWARD: How Amstel Light Shared a Single Beer with 115 Million People

SPECIALIST AUDIENCE – MARKETING TO MEN

Boston’s Brewin’: How Amstel Light Shared a Single Beer with 115 Million People  – Amstel Light, HUSA with MSLGROUP

The Challenge

The Amstel Light brand had lost its relevance in the 15 years since it hit the U.S. market. With declining sales, Amstel Light was barely on the radar of its target audience – men, age 25-34. It had become the ‘safe’ beer – no real personality, nothing distinctive, no real reason to be a part of timely guy conversations – and it began to communicate in a ‘safe’ way too. Amstel Light needed to show guys that it was still relevant, and, internally, the brand needed a winning effort to prove to decision makers that it could still break through.

2011 Biggest Stories

Adage presented the most important 10 stories in marketing and media.

Japanese Earthquake – 11th March 2011, memorable day when more than 15.000 people were killed.

PepsiCo Falls Behind Diet Coke – in a historic shift for the beverage industry, Pepsi , long the No. 2 carbonated soft drink in the country, fell to third place, behind Coke and Diet Coke.

Occupy Wall Street – this ragtag group included old-school Commies, idealistic millennials, Ron Paul supporters, media-savvy freelancers, retired hippies and who knows who else. With such an eclectic mix, it’s no surprise that the group seemed to have no central message other than change. And of the coherent messages that did come out of the encampments settled around the country, some sounded like straightforward anti-capitalism and others couldn’t be differentiated from the Tea Party platform. And yet? Written off during its first weeks, OWS is still making itself felt going into the winter, though it remains to be seen if it has the sort of effect on 2012 elections that the Tea Party had in 2010.

News Corp.Phone-Hacking Scandal – The revelation that News Corp.’s News of the World had hacked the voicemail of a missing teen girl, later found murdered, sparked the shutdown of the 168-year-old tabloid, until then the U.K.’s best-selling Sunday paper. It also scuttled News Corp.’s planned $12 billion-plus deal to buy the rest of British Sky Broadcasting, spawned ongoing investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, and forced resignations by Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton, News International CEO Rebekah Brooks and the head of Scotland Yard. Perhaps not least, it delivered News Corp. Chairman-CEO Rupert Murdoch to, as he put it, “the most humble day of my life.”

iPhone Leaves AT&T Fold  – In the old days, a fella looking for an iPhone — the culmination of 100 years of telephonic evolution — had one choice: AT&T . Kick and scream as many might, users of Verizon Communications, Sprint and all others had to change providers or settle with an Android. So this year, as the exclusive contract came to an end, many predicted mass defections from AT&T to Verizon . But in AT&T ‘s first full quarter that it has had to share the phone with Verizon , sales rose 2.2% to $31.5 billion. (Cutting the price on older iPhone 3GS to $49 likely helped). Sprint, too, finally got its hands on the product with the release of the iPhone 4S, but it’s too early to see if the phone is so magical it can lift the third-place provider’s sales numbers.

Beer Industry’s “Lost Decade” – Experts are forecasting beer volume will be down some 2% by year’s end. That would mark the third straight year of decline, which hasn’t happened in 50 years, Beer Marketers Insights President Benj Steinman noted in an October presentation to distributors, who had met at Caesars Palace for their annual convention and trade show. “If we have yet another year of 2% decline, it will be a lost decade,” he said. “We’ll be back to where we were 10 years ago.” MillerCoors CEO Tom Long told the same gathering that “the days of beer guys knocking each other around and not worrying too much about spirits and wine is over, and it’s frankly been over for a long time.”

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.