I never thought it would happen. Sure, other companies would fall into foreign hands. It seems like that's the way of the world these days. There are all kinds of explanations, rationalizations, and simple bullshit that can be raised on the topic of foreign ownership, but I don't care about that, at least for this particular case. I am just truly saddened that an American icon is now just another brand belonging to an international marketer.
Bud is getting hitched to Stella in a shotgun wedding.
With all the problems in our current economy, with Midwest Airlines today saying they'll trim their workforce by 1200, and GM accelerating plans to cut jobs and close factories, this isn't all that big a story... just another US company being swallowed up by foreign money.
But this is about BEER, damn it!
From the St.Louis Post Dispatch...
A-B's board sells kingdom to InBev for $52 billion
The board of directors of Anheuser-Busch Cos. on Sunday accepted a $52 billion takeover offer from Belgium's InBev, putting a quick end to a month long standoff between the companies. The agreement paves the way for a brewing colossus controlling about a quarter of the world's beer market.
For St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, the sale will end a run of independence that stretches back to before the Civil War. The buyout at $70 a share alsorepresents the biggest, boldest acquisition in the beer industry and one of the largest purchases of a U.S. company by a foreign suitor.
I know, I know. This is hardly a breaking news story; it's been more than rumored for weeks. But the selling of Anheuser-Busch -- of Budweiser -- to InBev -- fucking Stella Artois -- is a sad, sad event in American marketing, and a blow to American business heritage. True, Anheuser-Busch will still be in the new name, the catchy and clever Anheuser-Busch InBev, but it won't be the same. The company, while publicly traded for decades, has always been under the Busch family's control. Ever since Adolphus Busch had the good sense to marry the daughter of his boss, Eberhard Anheuser, there has been a man with the initials AAB running the company. Maybe AAB IV will get a number two spot, but this is InBev's baby now.
Anheuser-Busch pretty much made my career in advertising. Though I worked on other Fortune 100 brands, I lived Anheuser-Busch. It was a hugely profitable account for DDB Needham, and we serviced it accordingly. Being young, male and single, I was able to convert all my frat boy training into being a beer guy. I traveled all over to meet with wholesalers, introducing the repositioned Busch Beer brand in markets from Detroit to Salt Lake City. (Yeah, selling beer into Mormon country was a challenge.) But the fact that A-B was such a first-class operation, and treated agency partners as equals, made it by far the best client I ever worked for. (That's right, McDonald's. Sorry, State Farm. Suck it, Tyson. None of you came close.) The original brewery and company headquarters in St. Louis were as familiar to me as my own home town.
A-B's management had (and perhaps still has) a motto of sorts: "Making friends is our business." And they meant it. Whether it was the way they worked with wholesalers and retailers, or how they interacted with their customers, these guys just knew how to do it. We used to make what they referred to as "trade calls" to bars and taverns. To go into a place and order a round for the house, passing out ice cold bottles of Bud or Busch or Michelob, was a lot of fun. Invariably, though, some beer drinkers declined the offer, telling us they would never drink our beer. In that case, we'd cheerfully offer to buy them whatever they were already drinking. The strategic intent was, of course, that while the Bud guy bought that customer an Old Style to drink, the Old Style guy never bought him an Old Style. Making friends is their business.
If there was ever a group of people who followed the work-hard, play-hard mantra, it was the people I knew from A-B. We would have planning meetings every summer, often at some fun location where the brewery paid for everything. We'd have a packed agenda from 8am until maybe 3pm. Then it was time to go play golf or tennis, go water skiing, or just start drinking. And we'd drink well into the night. But no matter how, umm, tired we were the next morning, we were back at it by 8am. It's just how they did things. (Maybe that's what many of my old brewery pals don't drink anymore.) They would come up to Chicago with a stack of tickets to a Cubs-Cards series, then take the gang ut for dinner and pick up the tab. We held meetings and other off-site activities at beautifully built and maintained corporate hideaways to which we were delivered in their own 10 passenger helicopter or fleet of corporate aircraft. Awesome indeed.
Marketing plans were presented to Mr. Busch and his top executives at the end of the summer. Though the meetings were usually in August, they were called the "August Meetings" because of the man in charge. In the pre-Powerpoint days, our clients presented using overhead projectors and acetates. I drew the short straw three years running to be the flipper of the slides on stage with the client. This meant that I had to rehearse and revise a lot, but also that I got to see Mr. Busch's reaction to the presentations and, most importantly, the new advertising. I'd get cornered after the presentation by clients and agency management alike, asking how "The Third" (August A. Busch III) reacted. Did he laugh? At what part? Was he engaged?
The first time I met The Third, I almost wet my pants. He came up behind me in the line for the lunch buffet, stuck out his hand and introduced himself. He seemed to let slide my Ralph Kramdenesque "hominahominahomina" and asked me what I did for the agency, how I liked it, and what I thought of the Cardinals' chances. He scared me within an inch of my life just by talking to me. But it was a high point of my career at the time. Seeing him land (he was his own pilot) his chopper in the parking lot where we were holding meetings, stride up in a suit and cowboy boots, and bark "Good morning, gentlemen," will be forever etched in my memory.
Also not to be forgotten is my work with The Fourth. August A."call me August" Busch IV was my client when I was his media lawyer, as he called me, on his training brand, as it were. Bud Dry, which came and went pretty quickly around 1990, was The Fourth's on the job marketing experience. He was ably assisted by a guy named Manny Flores, a top-notch brand guy who quietly made The Fourth look good. But August was totally cool... especially for a guy who we jokingly said had won the lucky sperm contest. Here he was, 28 years old and rich beyond my wildest imagination... a scion of the beer business. And yet, he's the kind of guy that, after a bombastically expensive dinner, would invite us back to his house to be hospitable. He had a place that made my folks' dream house look like a dump. I included the earliest version of a modern, tricked out home theater I recall seeing, having an entire wall of really expensive equipment. In the middle of it all, the clock on the VCR was flashing 12:00. When a co-worker pointed it out, Manny dryly remarked, "The guy who sets VCR clocks only comes on Tuesdays." He probably wasn't too far from speaking the truth. Today, The Fourth is the CEO and the family member in charge as the company is sold to InBev. I cannot imagine he is happy about that, though I don't think he had much of a choice. But at $70 or so a share, he'll get over it.
My own taste in beer has certainly evolved. Since I don't (usually) drink it by the six pack anymore, I tend to go for micro brews and the like... and that takes me out of the core A-B brand portfolio. But I almost always have some Budweiser in the beer fridge. And I don't have it in there just to steam brats either. (That's what those 40 ounce bottles of Hamm's are for.) To this day, I have nothing but the utmost respect for Anheuser-Busch, the Busch family, and the people I worked with at the brewery. It's truly a shame to see this great American company become just another international corporate Lego block.
I'm headed to Austin for Netroots Nation tomorrow. The two other times I have been there were both for brewery business, meeting with one J. Dan Brown, the most colorful beer wholesaler I ever met in my life. I'm using American Advantage miles to fly down there... and those miles can probably be traced back to miles originally earned flying dozens of times a year to St. Louis on Ozark (which became TWA then American through a series of mergers). I can't say I will exclusively drink A-B products while on this trip, but being that I am going there for a convention, and judging from last year's Yearly Kos, I'm certain there will be some copious beer consumption on my part. I'll be sure to drink as many products with the "A and E" logo emblazoned on the label as I can. While I won't be buying rounds for the house, I will be sure to face the labels on any bottles I leave in my wake.
(Originally posted at Kerfuffle.)