Really cool article from Martyn Cornell about the evolution of porter in England - from the preferred drink to out of favor over time. The parallels to BMC are interesting.
Gonna have to get back and read the full article when I have more time, but the beginning page or so is very interesting stuff Jon
Very interesting read! Thanks for posting. Reminds me I am looong overdue to brew a historical porter/Durden Park stuff…
As one of those "about to fall off my perch"per the author, he fails to account for the new tricks of an old bird. Those of us with more experienced life stage are also abandoning the BMC crowd, so perhaps it is a combination of the two - indeed the younger newer beer guzzlers may be sustaining the Big Lager trade as drinking what they can afford…interesting read in any event!
I think it’s an interesting cautionary tale about market psychology. When any concept/product/industry is in a hot streak people think it will never end. Calling the end is just as futile as trying to predict the next trend, but regression to the mean is inescapable.
How much did Big Porter spend on advertising compared to Big Lager?
You can sell a lot of just about anything with a large enough advertising budget.
I thought “big lager” meant like a dopplebock…,
But anyway great article. Little concerned about the observation that mid 50 year old lager drinkers will be dying off in 10-15 years…I hope to be imbibing for another 35 years or so anyway.
Sometimes all that money perverts advertising execs and they get a little out of touch with reality… http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2016/05/10/budweiser-renames-cans-beer-america-anheuser-busch/84176886/
I saw that yesterday…wow. Kind of speechless beyond that.
Here’s great article about “Market Disruption” that suggests that Bud has been making the same mistakes as companies such as Kodak and Blockbuster
Hard to imagine a world without those blue cans of Bud Light littering the sides of the roads, but a boy can dream, can’t he? 
But how could I feel intellectually and morally superior if those people were littering the roadsides with empties of Duchesse De Bourgogne? I mean maybe we could let them have a Pivo Pils, but there needs to be a line right?
My hope and dream is that with an elevation in taste will also come with an elevation in class. If you throw your beer cans out the window then, yes, I am intellectually superior than you. I’d personally like to punch the people who litter my country road right in the face.
The article I linked to is a good one, so I’ll try not to stray from topic. Read it if you have a chance.
Yeah, the article is good. My fingers are crossed.
Totally agree and I do like the article. Sorry, just couldn’t resist the urge to be a smartass and make a joke that included Duchess. When I do that stuff at home my wife looks at me like I’m from Mars [emoji12]
That’s an interesting piece, but they ignore the distribution advantage AB has.
2. Customers who use the product need to go to an inconvenient, centralized location.
There’s lots of interesting beer happening near me, but I still have to travel to a big liquor store to get it. My local store is small and has a few locals and my grocery store still has most of its space devoted to the big boys and the craft brands they distribute, none of which are local.
Next time I’m there I’ll take a picture of the beer section at my neighborhood HEB and post it. They have about 4x the cooler space dedicated to craft as they do to BMC. They’ve always had a strong beer and wine section, but within the last 7 years the beer section has gone from 70% BMC / 30% craft to now about 20% BMC / 80% craft.
When I go back home to the tiny town where I grew up this is not the case. Most of that grocery store is still filled with BMC flagships, but they have started putting Blue Moon and other more flavorful beers from the same companies in the lineup (and their share of shelf is growing). I think this means that even in the biggest beer deserts tastes and minds are changing. Now it’s just a matter of time…
I wish the nicer HEB down in Brownsville had that selection. You must be near one of the major cities.
It’s funny… I just realized I am seeing some of this unfold now. The BMC crowd goes to a gas station (in Ohio) and the other folks go to a “better” place.
Rover, is spot on. The current battle of this war is being waged on distribution.
Yes, I’m in Austin. I didn’t realize you were in TX as well.
We shop at the HEB in Port Isabel a few times every summer when we head down to Padre Island for vacation. I usually have to stock up on craft beer before we leave Austin, as I haven’t been able to find much selection down there. That said, those places are a good place to find rare treasures like overlooked bottles of Bourbon County Stout, etc.
What I see a lot in the major grocery stores/big box stores around Dallas has been an expanding amount of space going to non-industrial lager but when one looks closely the amount of non-MillerCoors and non-ABI beer is shrinking and the amount of crafty labels (for lack of a better term) has expanded greatly. At the local Kroger we used to have almost an entire side of the aisle for craft beer. Now that is 1/2 stocked with MillerCoors and ABI crafty labels and 1/2 craft brands. We’re starting to get a lot more local breweries which means the shelf space per craft brand is going to shrink considerably.