Subscribe to Ad Age now for award-winning news and insight. High-quality journalism isn’t always free. (Known as SKUs, the term refers to various packaging and flavor varieties of brands.) The cuts are part of a broader pullback that includes the elimination of some 100 stock-keeping units. While the brands are rarely featured in expensive marketing campaigns, they have often enjoyed on-the-ground support at retail and from local distributors. The rest of the cut list includes Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve, Keystone Ice, Hamm’s Special Light, Keylightful (a fruity line extension of Keystone Light), Icehouse Edge, Magnum, Miller High Life Light, Steel Reserve 211 and Olde English HG 8000. Also on the chopping block is Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor Ice, but the core Mickey's brand, known for its green, beehive-shaped bottles, will remain. Molson Coors’ cuts include Milwaukee’s Best Premium although the brand’s ice beer and light beer varieties will survive. He also points out that young people are drinking less, and “when they are drinking they like low calories, but they also like different fruity flavors.” Even Joe Sixpack is converting to craft beer in a lot of cases,” says Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. “Consumers are getting a taste for more premium products. Subscribe to Ad Age now for the latest industry news and analysis. At the same time, younger drinkers have moved away from classic cheap beer brands and towards new products like hard seltzers. Molson Coors’ move follows a longer-term trend of brewers putting more focus on higher-priced brands that typically bring better profit margins. The plan, outlined today on the brewer’s second-quarter earnings call, follows moves by other consumer goods marketers to prune their product lines as they simplify their business during the pandemic. Molson Coors is taking an ax to its blue-collar beer lineup, eliminating 11 economy brands as it puts more emphasis on higher-priced beverages, including hard seltzers and non-alcoholic drinks like a new energy drink it is marketing with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
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