'Watered-Down' Budweiser Gets Kicked By World Cup Fans
Anheuser-Busch is getting its ass kicked by World Cup Football fans who are calling the company's sponsorship of the event offensive and overbearing. Yes, $40 million for pouring rights will certainly put the "watered-down beer" as Nuremberg graduate student Heiko Hofrickter called it in front of many who feel the American presence at the World Cup is mostly uncalled for since Americans think football is a game that involves grown men donning giant shoulder pads and crashing into one another while watching a pop star bare her breast during half time. Oh wait, they do that in Europe too. The baring of breasts that is.
While many Europeans are angered over the proliferation of American marketing in their back yards, its the crappy taste of Budweiser that really has people steamed. Hofrichter, while consuming a glass of Weissbier, summed it up saying, "We don't make anything that you can compare it to. We just don't make that kind of beer. Why would we, when you can drink this?"
Comments
Steve an American beer in Europe? Europeans have hated all of our beer for 200 years. Then you have yesterdays U. S. World Cup embarrassment. Forty million bucks Busch should have spent on fireworks for the end of the game. Oh they could have at least brought the fireworks home with them.
Oh the hating of our beer is certainly not new. The stupidity of Budweiser thinking they could get Europeans to drink the crap is.
Ok I apologize for calling our American stagnat water a beer. I agree with your statement about the amazing stupidity of trying to sell the stuff in Europe. What are we gong to try next Arkansas wine?
Europeans angry at American marketing efforts? Amazing.
The fact is, Anheuser-Busch DOES sell a crap load of beer in Europe. They also sell a crap load of beer in Latin America, China, and South America.
You can argue beer preferences 'till the cows come home...but if you think Budweiser is worried about marketing to Germans you're missing the bigger picture.
How fascinating. This is very huge news and its great to know Adrants is on top of this and are helping to make it topical. There are people in Europe that are angry about the marketing of a major US company, and are saying the product sucks? What the fuck is new? What is newsworthy about this? Please, if Adrants is going to show us industry stuff that veers from their normal pattern of giving us lots of happily-received t&a, make it substantive. There's too obvious of an alternative agenda to this posting.
Talk about poetic justice. The Miller, Coors and Busch families come from Germany. I mean, Anheuser Busch. Budweiser. Can you sound more German than that? Now pay for the crappy legacy you left us. This Bud's for you moin freund.
Must be a lot of Americans in Europe. Ok the real story is if this effort sells American Beer in Europe. Was it worth spending $40 million bucks at the World Cup, not likely. Why didn't they spend $20 million and buy the U.S. a winning team.
Much ado about nothing. I believe Budweiser bought the sponsorship before the host country was determined so it was just bad luck it ended up in the land of beer snobs. And as far as the crappy legacy goes, german breweries have to adhere to the "Reinheitsgebot" which Miller, Coors and Busch do not. This Bud's for you, mein Freund. ;)
Q: Why is American beer like making love in a canoe?
A: Because they're both fucking close to water.
Alternative agenda, dr? Please. We aren't smart enough to have one!
Whether it was part of AB's strategy or not, I think this posting pasted below needs to be revisited here as it hits the nail on the head. Germany will never buy American beer, but those much larger, soccer loving markets will......Hell, KFC is huge in China - who would've thunk it;( be on the look out for Pollo Campero there.)
"The fact is, Anheuser-Busch DOES sell a crap load of beer in Europe. They also sell a crap load of beer in Latin America, China, and South America.
You can argue beer preferences 'till the cows come home...but if you think Budweiser is worried about marketing to Germans you're missing the bigger picture"
KFC is huge in China because Asian people generally love fried chicken, so there's no surprise there.
AB wasted their money, no self-respecting beer nation would drink that crap.
that's beer-loving nation...
Just because you can afford a sponsorship, doesn't mean you should do it. Budweiser should expect a European backlash coming. McDonald's and Hyundai are not too far behind.
"Europeans have hated all of our beer for 200 years."
Here's a newsflash: it's not just Europeans. It's Canadians, too, eh!
Yes, Budweiser and Coors Light are available here, but the stuff that is call that here is made here, and has a different taste than that piss-coloured water that is called beer south of the border...
-kb
Ok I learned a little beer information tonight. Beer sales for American Beers in Europe just so so. What is the best bet for Anheuser-Busch, their "pumpkin spice ale" launched late last year.A little educational European Beer information from www.ceefoodindustry.com and www.beveragedaily.com. Gee does this mean they aren't selling American Beer over there?
The name Budweiser is coming from the town Budwar (Czech Rep.).
AB takes the name from here to create an authenticity illusion...
Budweiser Bdwar brand also exists.. no relevance with AB and Bud taste
And also Budweiser is switching to Bud in case of possibility of loosing the rights of using the name Budweiser..
An American ..so called bear... taking the name from a czech town (roots of brewing).. to act like beer...
end of story..
Actually AB reached an agreement so that the German brewery could continue selling at the stadium since they realized that if the stadium only sold AB, there would be a pre-riot before the match. There aws extensive coverage in the WSJ.
The non-American view our beer is part chauvanism and part snobbishness. Coors and Bud are positioned as light beers, for light occasions (cook outs, etc.). But, there is also Sam Adams and many other smaller and darker regional beers. Where's the dislike for Corona, Sapporo, Molson, Labatts, and Fosters? Those are all mass produced lighter beers. I know, they are not American, and its easy to hate things American these days. Add it to the list.
BC: Molson and Labatts have much more flavour than the Coors and Bud produced in the US.
It has nothing to do with the nationality, and everything to do with the snobbish attitude that says "our stuff is better than yours."
-kb
Someone stated above that A-B has negotiated a multi-event contract and thus, can't control where the games are. This is true. Just as they've done for the Olympics.
Sure, this year the World Cup is in Germany, a country known for their amazing beer and dislike of American beer (no thanks to the dozen or so military installations around the country).
But in 2010, when the World Cup is held in South Africa...SAB Miller's backyard...A-B will be lauded with "snatching up" a HUGE sponsorship in their primary competitors back yard.
One more thing...for a site that blasts brands for trying to be everything to everyone...the fact that Bud is unabashedly American, and pretty much sticking to that...is a bit refreshing. No playing off their German roots...no pretending they stand up to the fuller local lagers...just the WORLDS MOST PURCHASED beer being part of the WORLDS MOST WATCHED EVENT seems to make sense.
Then again...I'm from the midwest, so I don't know anything.
As a proud drinker, nay SWILLER, of Budweiser, I say this: It's stories like these that remind me of why I don't like the World Cup.
Oh but we do get mean at times. What I am going to sit down with a good Fosters and think about buying a good beer from China to chase it with.
I grew up just a couple of miles from an American military base and have never heard of nor experienced anything unpleasant with soldiers stationed there. The few that did venture out and mingled with us also happily drank German beer. So I really don't believe that that's where the dislike comes from.
Budweiser is sold in Germany in more recent years primarily as an expensive novelty beer, ironically. Mostly younger people or those trying to be hip are buying it. I also don't think anybody, except for those in the beverage industry are aware of it's German roots.
Trying to be play up that fact would have backfired in both countries and I believe Americans would have felt a tad betrayed by A-B, and rightfully so.
We beat the Germans in a war, and our corporations have more money, so let them drink our Pißwasser. This however teaches Bud not to sponsor soccer.
Yeah. That happens for sponsoring a sport that caters Europeans and their former Third-World colonies.
do we need a nap now? let's not get cranky.
The reason they "sell a lot of beer in europe", unfortunately, is due to the gullibiily of the young people who succumb to the hype even it is shitty beer. If they portray bud/miller/whatever, as the "cool" beer from America, kids are bound to buy it just to be as cool as "kids from new york" or whatever the sales pitch is. Disgusting, really.
The reason they "sell a lot of beer in europe", unfortunately, is due to the gullibily of the young people who succumb to the hype even if it is shitty beer. If they portray bud/miller/whatever, as the "cool" beer from America, kids are bound to buy it just to be as cool as "kids from new york" or whatever the sales pitch is. Disgusting, really.
I don't think I would get to excited about all of it. After a little checking there isn't an American made beer in the top fifteen in all of Europe (as high as the lists I saw go.)None of the home town brew will win place or show in South America (or Canada.) The big question is if all of this World Cup effort was worth $40 million bucks. Not likely! We can whine about the "European Attitudes" all we want, what we need is a better product for the market, Thus far no "American" company has one.
Americans are such wimp-asses. They think they're so macho but they're only a bunch of tossers. Their beer 'Bud' is testimony to this - making love in a canoe.