The Dirt Cheap Chicken spreads holiday cheer. Seasons Greetings from the Brew Noob and Toothpick Swords!
Dirt Cheap is a local discount chain of Liquor and tobacco stores in the St. Louis metro area that serves as “the last refuge of the persecuted smoker”. Their memorable low-budget ads featuring owner Fred and the Dirt Cheap Chicken (the mascot seen in this ad) were a regular fixture on the TV airwaves growing up in the area.
To me the store seemed ubiquitous, and with taglines like “Cheap-cheap! Fun-fun!” from their mascot and slogans like “the more she drinks the better you look”, hardly adding glamor to this young adult’s impression of beer drinkers. Indeed, the store carried their own line of Dirt Cheap Beer, presumably to compete alongside St. Louis mainstays like Nattie Light and Busch beer.
In retrospect, it’s kind of a small wonder I gained a taste for craft beer at all, growing up in the macro-brew capital and consistently exposed to ads like these for Dirt Cheap.
beverage ad with art deco style. my college assignment.
I don’t love Budweiser but this design is great
(via fuckyeahbeer)
Beer is thing of beauty in this Wes Anderson directed advertisement for Stella Artois
Samurai seem to love Murphy’s Irish Stout, at least in this 1990’s commercial.
Context matters in social media, especially for beer brands.
As craft breweries extend their brand through social media, it’s important to consider how followers differentiate from fans and advocates. Context of the media is especially important: while labels and logos can make a big impression for beer purchasing descisions in the store, Twitter followers might expect more playful, less formal interaction with a smaller brewer.
An except from FastCompany’s 5 Steps for Consumer Brands to earn Social Currency:
What do beer drinkers talk about? Not what brewers think they will, the study concludes. Who cares if a beer is triple-hopped in an ultra-cold bottle? “Product and packaging innovations do not help create relevance in this consumer’s daily life,” Joachimsthaler says. What’s important is the bonding or “social context” during consumption. Anheuser-Busch’s ballyhooed bud.tv, an original Web-video site, tacitly encouraged being a solitary Web potato — and quietly folded last year. Similarly, those Bud Light Lime ads on the Weather Channel’s iPhone app won’t help partiers reach the beach. Bud’s attempt to brand “fan cans” in collegiate colors for tailgating was the right kind of bonding idea, though, sadly for Bud, it failed when colleges feared the cans would encourage underage drinking. Even so, who wouldn’t share the tale of that time their beer was confiscated?
At the end of the day, it’s important for a beer brand to meet their market wherever they spend their time; whether it’s sharing a beer with good friends in the local public house, or in a beer review community where opinion leaders and advocates debate debate the merits of floral hops.
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