MILWAUKEE -- Allegiances: They’re part of the American way.
Americans typically have a favorite restaurant or food, or a favorite holiday. They root for the home team and get bent out of shape when that team loses to a longtime rival.
And those allegiances extend to consumer products, too: a favorite soap, soda or, yes, beer.
As Anheuser-Busch InBev begins to tie up the loose ends on its proposal to purchase SABMiller, an interesting change is coming to the beer market that could test those allegiances.
Through multiple acquisition deals going down in unison, the Miller brand portfolio—Miller Lite, Miller High Life, Miller High Life Light, Miller Genuine Draft and Miller 64—is about to change teams. It will be jettisoned from SABMiller—note the key “Miller” mention in the parent-company name—to join Team Molson Coors, a company whose largest brand, Coors Light, was once a chief rival of Miller Lite.
Arguably, Miller Brewing is the biggest brand to ever come out of Milwaukee. Assuming the AB InBev-SABMiller deal and the related agreement between those brewers and Molson Coors go down as planned, the Miller beers will be controlled from Denver and … Montreal?
When I explained this to my wife, who lived in Milwaukee for four years, she summed it up simply: “Well, that’s weird!”
Granted, the strings on the Miller brands have been pulled in the United States from Chicago by MillerCoors since 2007, and more globally from London or South Africa by SABMiller for five years before that. That’s not something on which the general public has kept tabs.
But the divorcing of the Miller brand from anything resembling (or spelled) M-I-L-L-E-R could set some consumers off here in the United States, like that pitcher who moved from the Cubs to the White Sox, or that defensive linesman who went from the Bears to Green Bay. (Yes, I’m from Chicago.)
But when you take the Silver Bullet out of the equation, you’ve still got that age-old question: Red or blue? The lines start to the left …
Steve Holtz,who writes the Fluid Thoughts blog, is the online news director and beverage editor for Winsight Media. He has been covering the convenience-store industry and the beverage category for more than a decade. Contact him at sholtz@winsightmedia.com.
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