I looked through the window on a warm, spring day and was pleased with what I saw. The mountains were bright blue.
Obviously, I was not looking through my apartment window. No, I was actually taking advantage of Coors Light’s newest innovation, a window in the side of the case that allows potential customers to see whether the concealed beer is cold.
Actually, the enhancement is nothing more a rectangular hole scissored into a box full of beer, though it is being dubbed by Coors as a major improvement.
Seeing the commercials made me think about the challenges beer companies face marketing their products. They must take their unchanged product and continually market it to the public. If the company is looking to broaden its appeal, resorting to gimmicks appears to be a logical solution.
That is also because these companies know that changing the contents is essentially suicide. When Coca-Cola changed its taste in the mid-’80s, the public uproar was so great that it switched back to its original flavor. A beer manufacturer would likely have the same fate.
I have to think that selling beer is a lot like selling coffins. Only the outside changes; the inside remains pretty constant.
This analogy has led Coors to create the vented wide mouth, the cold-activated mountains and now the window in the box. None of these innovations actually does anything, but it has probably been an effective marketing strategy nonetheless.
In fact, what Coors has done is ingenious, especially with the blue mountains. For anyone who is unfamiliar, the mountains on the can turn blue when the beer is cold. They then turn gray as the beer warms up.
However, the mountains fade long before the beer actually gets warm.
Therefore, when a person who is casually sipping on a beer notices global warming taking away his or her mountains, they will drink faster, finish the can and reach for a new one with fresh, blue mountains.
Coors is not the only company to make aesthetic changes to its product. Miller has come out with advancements such as the flavor seal and, most recently, the vortex bottle. The flavor seal, as far as I can tell, is nothing more than a golden ring around the top of the can.
The newly developed vortex bottle has a spiral neck, like a screw. It’s supposed to produce a faster pour. I cannot speak for everyone, but I have never found pouring out a bottle difficult, and I certainly do not need it to pour faster. That would only result in the beer spilling faster after somebody drops it.
But, again, these are not bad marketing techniques. Any of these adaptations would dupe some new customers into buying the product. And if those new customers like the taste, they will be customers for life.
Many people might find new beer commercials and innovations tacky, desperate and annoying, they must ask themselves: With a cold beer in hand, who can really complain?
