Comment by fallinditch
10 hours ago
After sales slumped in the 70s they created a disastrous advertising campaign which is a case study in customer alienation: effectively 'drink Schlitz or I'll kill you' :-
10 hours ago
After sales slumped in the 70s they created a disastrous advertising campaign which is a case study in customer alienation: effectively 'drink Schlitz or I'll kill you' :-
Wilkins Coffee (which gave employment to a young Jim Henson before Sesame Street or The Muppet Show) was quite successful with its implication that people who don't drink Wilkins get shot and suffer other misfortunes. Maybe having puppets do it was just more charming.
https://youtu.be/HVewx3-9x24
That's not my read of the message of those ads at all.
See
Oh, Schlitz: How a Historic Ad Campaign Helped Kill America’s Biggest Beer Brand
https://vinepair.com/articles/schlitz-history-ad-campaign
I wonder if that type of article would exist if they had made good brewery decisions before launching the commercials. I mean they aren't great commercials, but I don't know I'd compare them to the unabomber or call it the brand killer. The brand was already killed, the commercials just weren't great.
1 reply →
Those seem pretty ordinary by beer commercial standards.
Advertising didn't kill Schlitz. They made some processing changes to their formula that caused a micro infection. Not sure, could have been Pediococcus. But they did it all at once, and ruined so many batches, that customers left and never came back.