Advertising whiz Jerry Della Femina, who not only lived but epitomized the high life depicted in the TV series “Mad Men,” once tried to sell light beer and couldn’t.
He writes in his entertaining 1971 bestseller, “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor,” how his brilliant campaign for Gablinger’s Diet Beer, a product of Rheingold Breweries, failed to persuade suds-lovers to switch brands in order to cut calories.
Forced to explain how his judgment could have been so wrong, the ad maven whines that he didn’t initially understand how beer-drinkers — being some sort of primitive blue-collared species — actually took pride in their distended guts, and considered the word “Diet” as anathema.
Others would simply say that both the product and its ad support missed the mark by miles.
Gablinger’s happened along, way back in 1967. A decade would pass before Miller Lite and Natural Light from Anheuser-Busch would emerge to create a sector category. Today three of the four leading beer brands are “light,” as are six of the top 10. That would make these diluted brews the new normal. And that, in turn, would force some brewing industry executive to spur the introduction of an Extreme Light as the new, um, light.

Beer at its most ephemeral
Hence, Molson Canadian 67: a beer so light, that, as the joke might go, you hardly need bother. As much as I’d like to think that the “67″ name is there to honor the year of both the birth of Gablinger`s and the Canadian centennial, it actually refers to the number of calories in a 12-ounce bottle. That compares with an even 100 calories in conventional light beer, or 150 or so in the full-strength variety. (Here’s a private message for Stephanie DeSutter of Molson, who spun the following prevarication to Marketing Magazine: “When people automatically think there’s anywhere from 200 to 250 calories per bottle of beer, there’s definitely a great opportunity for a brand like 67 to come in and make that calorie call-out.” Which people? Badly misinformed people who can’t read the nutritional information on their beer label? That’s the market you’re targeting?)
There have been other ultra-low calorie lagers before, and they’ve all been rejected by consumers. I used to buy something called Alta, a product of the Blitz-Weinhard brewery in Portland, that also hit the scales at 67 calories. It was quite tasteless indeed, but kept a fellow hydrated, and the price was right for school-kid budgets. I can’t imagine that the new Molson product will be any better, or any good at all, but the marketers seem determined to avoid Jerry Della Femina’s last-century missteps.
The National Post newspaper reports that Molson is using a blog-trolling service called Radian 6 to scope out comments about the new brew, and an article adds that the company will “respond to those consumers in what it calls ‘Direct to Drinker’ engagement.” I guess we’ll see exactly how that works, but if you’re planning on engaging this blogger, Ms. DeSutter, please leave the stepped-on suds in your office.

The original Mad Man?
Now, if Jerry Della Femina had personally showed up on your granddad’s doorstep, and instructed him to drink Gablinger’s, well, things might have played out differently. JDF is a biggish gentleman whose shaved-head-and-beard was a trademark in the days when he, along with Shel Silverstein, Yul Brenner and the fictive pair of Mr. Clean and Lex Luther, were the only lads sporting that particular look. Then Kojak and Michael Jordan joined the gang. Now, the denuded-skull-with-goatee is the other side of the new normal, accompanied by a weak beer in front of you, to complete the image.
Last week, Mr. and Mrs. J.T. Grossmith showed up in town, following a year-long road trip hither and tither, during which time we’ve failed to keep in touch using Skype.
J.T., the male component in the couple, has affected the Full, Complete Jerry Della Femina, but, to his credit, wouldn’t accept a Molson Canadian 67 when I offered to treat him at the neighborhood pub, and agreed to a glass of white wine. Something about a shaved head seems to accentuate a man’s eyes, and I was surprised to see that I’d never really paid any attention to J.T.’s peepers during the 30 years of our friendship. His are what I would call extraordinarily cop-like, which I may elaborate upon during a future occasion: say, if I ever get around to scribbling that police-procedural novel I think I may have in me.
Perhaps, if Ms. DeSutter and her team are open to a marketing opportunity involving strategic product placement, I may call the book “Badge 67,” and it may feature a bald, cruel-eyed detective who watches his waistline by drinking watery lager — and is miserable, as a consequence. I’m keeping most of the plot under my hat, but part of the dramatic tension will come as the detective searches high and low, both in lowdown dives and swell joints, looking for the miscreant who stole two-thirds of the flavor from his bottle of beer.
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- More about struggling beer brands, in Mitch’s April 2009 post about Rolling Rock.








I can report that the seaside resort on the Irish Sea is likely the same in 2009 as it was previously, except that there are fewer visitors and possibly a greater proportion of female beach-sitters wearing black robes to preserve modesty — as prescribed by their religion, one presumes. It’s a traditional delight, is what it is, and they don’t even put quotation marks around traditional while they’re trying to sell you traditional Blackpool Rock, traditional three-quid fish ‘n’ chips, and a collection of some of the grubbiest-looking traditional B&Bs seen outside of the area of Paddington Station in the 1970s.
This is a scene designed to make progressives queasy, and nostalgics all wistful-like. Donkey rides on the beach. A big clanking roller-coaster. Jellied eel and jars of lager. All in counterpoint to what is going on everywhere else in the land, where the old ways belong to the last millennium.
Blackpool, on the other hand, has strippers, and lewd comedians. It was pointed out to me somewhere on the promenade that, on certain street-corners, the eastern European sex-trade workers are as common as seagulls. Couldn’t tell you about that. I can attest, however, that Bass ale and Carling lager are still vended openly in pubs, and that pinot grigio and Mojitos are not the potables of choice, as is the case one hour’s drive south. I raise a glass of something to good old Blackpool, where I’d guess that any early school-leaver on the dole can still get blotto and go off onto the beach after last call, with some bloke she can barely see, and show up on telly a year or so later, appearing on the Jeremy Kyle program to await the result of a DNA paternity test — providing persuasive evidence that, in spite of appearances, maybe there will always be an England.







































The exercise of revivifying a disposed-with TV franchise as a live theatrical event is now an established off-Broadway genre, and a proven means of peddling ducats to audiences who turn nostalgic over the mention of cult classics such as
Then, again: You can’t call the viewers of the “Happy Days” TV series a cult, and it may not be entirely correct to label them viewers, either. Consumers, more like it. There once was a Happy Days industry in North America, the same way there were once other industries, i.e., automotive, fruit canning, shoemaking, etc. Time was when you could buy Happy Days
If the “Happy Days” TV program seemed to last your entire life, perhaps it did; perhaps it has. On the other hand, the musical version’s two hours pass quickly and something close to enjoyably. The book and story come courtesy of Mr. Marshall, and are what you will expect from the fellow who drew laughs from the catchphrase “Sit on it.” By which I mean, the intent is not ambitious. The music, appropriately by ’70s-relic Paul “We’ve Only Just Begun” Williams, is okay, and incorporates familiar snatches of the original sitcom theme, penned by Tin Pan Alley denizen Norman Gimbel.
Ol’ Mitch’s condiment blend sounds familiar, as though it could be very close to Tony Cachere’s New Orleanian product, but I suppose I should send him an order and put it to the test. What’s holding me back is that I’m not sure I want to provide Mitch Shannon with Mitch Shannon’s credit card information. This has security risk written all over it. But I can’t help but think he needs a Canadian distributor for his spice line. Perhaps an exchange would work well. I may need to buy some property around Lodi, which would provide a fitting base from which to practice the chords of the John Fogerty song, “Oh, lord, stuck in Lodi again.”
Just like the governor of California, and the trophy-wives of investment bankers, and a pack of other environmentally insensitive louts, there’s a mud-streaked Hummer parked in my driveway — or there would be if the thing would fit in the shared driveway of my inner-city shack. As it is, I leave it parked overnight on the street, and when I squeezed defiantly past a schoolteacher in a Smart car this morning I’d swear that she glowered at me. Probably a vegetarian, I’m guessing, skedaddling to work, where she’ll force her joyless students to watch that Al Gore movie one more time.
Felt they were. Last week I was stopped in my Saab at an intersection a couple of blocks from my office, where I was rear-ended by an 81-year-old woman who was returning home from a doctor’s appointment. A different octogenarian, I hasten to add. This one drove (note use of past tense) a rather cherry ‘99 Mustang, which looked mighty sportin’ until the moment of impact, at which point the entire front end sang its closing roulade. Quite a wallop, as the body-shop dude described the collision, using a technical term. The other driver was shaken, but not hurt. I, however, was plenty freaked out, wondering if the occurrence was karmic payback for having so callously used a senior-citizen as a prop in my despicable act of electronic raconteurship.























