One of my favorite scenes from Mad Men is from its premier episode “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”. Let me set up the scene before you watch the clip. It’s 1960 New York City, Don Draper is the genius creative director at Sterling Cooper, an advertising agency on Madison Avenue. Unable to come up with an idea for bigtime client Lucky Strike, Don drops the ball while giving his presentation. Frustrated, Lucky Strike execs get up to leave when Don has an epiphany.
This scene immediately came to mind when I saw a Miller Lite ad touting that it’s “triple hops brewed”. It made the Bruce Banner beer geek in me go a little Hulk. Saying your beer is “triple hops brewed” is like Honda saying their cars come with four wheels. Most beer is brewed with three hop additions. Bittering hops, flavor hops and aroma hops, in that order. Miller is cleverly taking ownership of hop additions the same way Lucky Strike used the toasting of tobacco to differentiate its brand from the competition.
But this is nothing new. Miller Genuine Draft is “cold filtered”. Coors Light is “frost brewed”. Budweiser is “beechwood aged”. And now Miller Lite is “triple hops brewed”. Ninety percent of the beer market is made up of American Lagers or Light American Lagers by these three breweries. When you’re essentially making the same beer as the other guy, you need to find some way to stand out. For the uninformed beer drinker, which are a majority of Americans, these buzzwords help them do that. The average beer drinker feels satisfied about their purchase thinking they’ve made an informed choice. When in reality there really wasn’t one to begin with. So Don Draper was right, advertising is based on one thing - happiness. And you know what they say, ignorance is bliss.
5 Comments
hey austin, you know i watched that miller lite commercial and as soon as i heard “triple hops brewed”, i immediately thought about our discussion the other day about “cold fitered” and the such. now my brewmaking knowledge is only cursory, but i thought surely this was just a marketing ploy. sure enough, my instincts were right. thank you for the insight and the context in which you framed it. always question everything!
Thanks for the comment Carlos! Yup, it’s just another marketing buzzword. I’m sure we’ll hear more of these buzzwords as beer drinkers become more sophisticated and the old ones don’t cut it anymore. Let’s do a Southbay beer outing sometime soon now that I’m down here for a few weeks. Did you make it to Naja’s IPA Fest?
hahaha Augi gets FURIOUS watching these commercials. I remember the first few times we saw this commercial, and he threw down whatever he was holding and was like, “REALLY??!! Cuz ALL beers are triple hops brewed!!!”
Sometimes when I want to piss him off I ask for a beer that has drinkability. lol
Haha yeah Augi and I talked about this when we met up while you were in Australia. The first time I saw it I wanted to throw the remote at the TV. Don’t get me started on “drinkability”. It’s like saying, “Hey drink our beer, it’s the most middle-of-the-road and unflavorful beer on the market!”.
Marketing. It’s all about trying to market their beer to the “beer snob”. Like it would really work. The average Miller drinker couldn’t care less about how it’s made. All they car about is that it was on sale. It’s nothing more than an attempt to take market share away from the little guys.
(Can you tell I hate Miller?)