Even if you make an awesome product, if you don't help your perfect customer identify with your brand, it won't sell. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients, so here's one of those. [Tapper's Jewelry Ad] Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, along with Stephen Semple, and we talk about brands, building big brands, big, exciting, profitable brands, and yet, during the countdown, Stephen didn't mention which brand we're going to be talking about, but he did mention a category. Somebody built an empire so big that their product actually created the category of light beer. Stephen Semple: Yes, and the reason why I have to look at it that way is it's a big company that made it happen, but it's still a pretty interesting story, because light beer, look, it's a huge category in the beer business, and it was not always that way. In fact, when light beer was first launched, it was a huge failure. It bombed, and it was Miller that created the first success in this space and really created this as a category. At its peak in 1977, Miller Lite was the number two beer in America. Dave Young: We've talked about Miller Lite and their campaign, and they had the world by the tail with Miller Lite. Stephen Semple: They really did, yeah. Dave Young: Then somebody talked him into changing the campaign. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Yep. Dave Young: Because it was at their peak, when it was the Less Filling, Tastes Great. Stephen Semple: Yes. That's what made it, and we're going to talk about how that came about, because it's a really interesting story. Because calorie-reduced beer was introduced in the market in New York by Rheingold Brewery as Gablister's Diet Beer. Dave Young: Yum. Stephen Semple: Sorry. Gablinger's Diet. It was introduced as a diet beer, and it was made using a process developed by chemist Herscher Gablinger of Basel, Switzerland, so it's this Swiss chemist created the process. The version used by Rheingold was developed by Joseph Owades. Now, Joseph then offered the recipe to Peter Hand Brewery, which created Meister Brau Light, so the second one that came out was Meister Brau Light. Now Peter Hand Brewery got into financial trouble in 1972 and sold several of their labels to Miller, and Miller relaunched the light beer as Lite Beer from Miller, not Miller Lite at first, it was Lite Beer from Miller, and Lite being L-I-T-E. It didn't do well. In fact, it was a dud. Around the same time, another brewery was struggling with a light calorie-reduced beer, and the category was simply not working. The problem was the ads were aimed at dieters. Dave Young: This was the era of Tab soft drink. There were diet things. Everything was diet, diet. My guess is they steered the diet industry in a different direction. Stephen Semple: The whole diet thing, just for the beer category, didn't work, but here's when things get strange. When they were doing market research on it, because Miller really believed there was an opportunity here, and when they did market research on it, it showed that 90% of Miller drinkers had tried the light beer once, they had tried it. They didn't say they disliked it, but they didn't buy it again. On one hand, you can go, "Well, the advertising's working, the promotion's working, our drinkers are trying it. They're not saying they dislike it, but they're not buying it again." Here's basically where they landed. The Miller beer drinker at that time was really described as the two-fisted drinker,
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