Marketing and all things related

Now you might think that beer is beer, and you would be wrong naturally. Like fine wine, beer is brewed with a rainbow of delicate flavors for the distinguished pallet. (And of course, Anheuser-Busch brews the basic stuff a horse would enjoy.) But you were probably not aware of the fine-tuned market segmentation brewers ascribe to their brands. We learned from Rene Hooft Graffland, Heineken’s chief financial officer, for example, that their Amstel Light brand “is very much Caucasian, 35-plus in age and very high-income." We tasted one recently, but noticed a hint of blue-collar Caucasian—ah well—what do we know? In any event, we learned from Advertising Age (free registration required,) that “Heineken's Amstel Light is struggling to maintain relevance within the import-light-beer category it invented, and the culprit may be ... Heineken Premium Light.” But maybe the problem is gender. You see, Amstel Light is a male beer, and Heineken Premium Light is positioned as a female brew. If you are confused, so is Marketing Blurb. However, we are going to settle this once and for all. Set us up with another glass of each.