In an age of weak beer and no hair, Molson Canadian 67 embraces the New Normal

Jerry, man...

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.

Live, alas, and on-stage: ‘The Harder They Come’

Dem-a-loot, dem-a-shoot, dem-a-wail

When a big movie comes unexpectedly out of a little country, it’s an event to remember, and everyone will  recall the 1973 release of “The Harder They Come,” the Jamaican reggae-infused gangster film. I first watched the movie as a high-school kid during the Nixon presidency, Spiro Agnew still a contemporary political figure, and me thinking, “Whew, I need to see this again.” Which I have done, many times in various cities. Bought the soundtrack, too, along with anything I could get my hands on by Desmond Decker and the Aces, or the Maytals (later Toots and the Maytals), and then the entire Wailers catalogue. We spent years amusing ourselves by reciting the script’s best lines, waiting for the most inappropriate occasions to begin imitating the Trenchtown patois: “Gimme break, mon” and “Don’… fawk… wid me!”

Jimmy's shirt: It sure would look good on you, dad

It would seem like a wonderful idea to base a stage musical on this landmark movie. The first British version was staged in 2006, and moved to the West End last summer, to positive reviews. The original cast is now appearing in a touring edition, which I caught in Toronto last week.

It’s always a hell of a thing to see what the passage of 36 years has done to our culture. The film used a cinema-verite technique to depict reggae as, in Bob Marley’s phrase, Rebel Music, imported from the teeming Third World. Now, the music is as safe and familiar as any other packaged consumable. The Canon Theatre had a big display for Red Stripe Jamaican lager — in contrast to the obvious reality that when the Rude Boy scene was emerging, the brewers must have been terrified that their trucks would be looted by rechet-carrying yoot. More galling still: the distinctive jersey worn by Jimmy Cliff in the film version, an item I’ve searched for high and low and would have gladly paid a fortune for on E-bay, was being sold at souvenir stands at a brisk rate to ridiculous middle-aged men exactly like myself.

The performance is lively and spirited, and all the other verbs reviewers use when what they’re really trying to say is that the show isn’t all that good. The story has lost something — actually, a few things — in translation from gritty movie to slick musical. You get the feeling the producers’ first choice would have been to obtain rights to that other Jamaican-themed movie, the 1993 John Candy comedy “Cool Runnings,” but that was a Disney film and you know what those Disney people are like to deal with. Momsers.

Instead, they’ve Disneyfied all the rough edges out of a story that, to begin with, was perhaps not that much more than the sum of its rough edges. What’s left is one of those frenetic song-and-dance musicals with a few comic turns, done in tribute to the swell old music of bygone days, viz. “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” That’s well and good, except three of the show-stopping ensemble numbers in this production have been imported from somewhere that isn’t “The Harder They Come.”

You get Jimmy Cliff’s “Wonderful World, Beautiful People,” always a treat to hear, but not part of the original film, perhaps for the reason that it has nothing to say about the story line. You also get “Day-O,” made famous by Harry Belafonte, as a sop for those who would leave might leave the theatre disappointed after seeing a musical that’s supposed to take place in the Carribean that doesn’t include “Day-O.” Worst of all, you get not one, but two renditions of the Jackie Wilson classic, “(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher & Higher,” and that’s two more than were required. Wilson was a great artist, who experienced a severe myocardial infarction while onstage, just as began to sing the lyric of that song that begins, “My heart….” He probably deserves a West End musical of his own, but what he surely does not deserve is to have his signature song plopped mindlessly into the mandatory church-gospel scene of a mediocre stage play. Wilson wasn’t mediocre, and, for that matter, neither was he West Indian, which gives you an early sense of how quickly things veer off-course.

The cast is good, and the singing is very fine. Rolan Bell makess a plausible Jimmy Cliff stand-in, and Chris Tummings does a better-than-adequate job belting out Toots Hibbert’s “Pressure Drop.”

Unfortunately, this just serves to recall how all the uneven pleasures of the movie have been flattened into a flavorless paste in the musical. The first glimpse of Toots on screen was potent enough to raise him to top billing in his group, and then to ceaseless global acclaim. The character played by Tummings, as seen on film, was an intriguingly conflicted figure, a sympathetic authority figure who determined that it was a necessary part of keeping the peace in raucous Kingston, to turn a blind-eye to the ganga trade.

The musical encourages a re-examination of the movie — and the movie is a superior work, in every respect. Viewers who haven’t seen the film for several years will be delighted to recall such wonders as Bob Charlton’s quietly malevolent portrayal of the local music tycoon, Hilton, a pale, pipe-sucking presence who dictates what the islanders will hear on the “heet parade.” His assistant is a benign Sino-Jamaican, which draws attention to the simple reality that the former colony is and was far more complex and multi-dimensional than its image might lead you to first think. The musical discourages this kind of complicated thinking, to its detriment.

Admittedly, some especially violent sequences from the celluloid edition would be difficult to assign to live actors. Jimmy Cliff’s character, provoked, attacks his tormentor with a knife, and is sentenced to be lashed. The film vividly shows Cliff being flogged by authorities, while his bladder involuntarily empties. The voice heard over these images is that of the sentencing magistrate, as he thoughtfully delivers his verdict, offered with regret, but also calculated to encourage rehabilitiation and maintain public order.

This depiction is intended to be considered antideluvian and brutal — but today seems nearly enlightened, compared to the contemporary American practice of providing wholesale lengthy incarceration for non-violent offences.

Another striking scene from the movie that failed to make it on stage involves the Jimmy Cliff character, who while seeking work, wanders into the estate of a wealthy Upper St. Andrew housewife, played by Beverly Anderson. There is a half-moment of mutual sexual tension, as the lady of the house mildly flirts — and then the Jamaican class-structure inevitably and abruptly kicks in, as Ms. Anderson haughtily dismisses him from her grounds.

Prime Mininster and Mrs. Manley

Art meets life: That actress became the wife of Prime Minister Michael Manley, a mixed-race politician who won election after shrewdly becoming the first candidate to usurp the emerging musical movement by employing a reggae campaign theme, “Better Must Come.” The international ambassador and exemplar of reggae, and the tiny nation’s great poet, Bob Marley, was another Jamaican of mixed-race, who touched audiences on every continent.

The power of the music, and of the movie, is a slice-o’-life authenticity that still resonates through the generations. The stage play is a stylized slice-of-show business that offers an extended brand experience, some heart, but not too much mind or soul. Fifteen minutes after leaving the theatre, you’re thinking you’d like to go home and watch the movie one more time on DVD.

A hard-knock future for Rolling Rock beer

I’m trying my best this morning not to see parallels between the fate of our lives as misfits in the 21st Century, and the disturbing news about Rolling Rock beer.

Giddyap, sucker

But, just like unlucky Moe Greene and that other sorry goombah in The Godfather, you have to conclude that someone who goes to the trouble of placing a horse`s head on your mattress is trying to tell you something.

(c) 1939, Latrobe Brewing Company

Allow me that filmic comparison, for a green bottle depicting a horse`s head was the precise trademark imagery that built Rolling Rock into a semi-great brand, back when suds were sold regionally and promoted sparingly. Rolling Rock, made by the Latrobe Brewing Company in Pennsylvannia, could afford only cardboard signs for point-of-sale, which declared their brew to be the Coors of the East. Coors used to be unavailable on the right-hand side of the Rockies, where it had established word-of-mouth demand through scarcity. Liquor store owners in the suburbs of Washington, DC would pay truckers to sneak a few dozen cases back from Colorado, and would mark them up accordingly for those willing to pay.

Rolling Rock, also a pale, understated lager, and also the sole brand of its manufacturer, attempted to horn in on the Coors cachet, which was silly, because Coors was already planning its assault on the east coast. Beside which, Rolling Rock had so much more to offer, in the form of its distinctive containers.

All you can really add is `33`

Latrobe never modernized its package design, sticking with a funky 1930s look painted directly on green glass. Enhancing the oddball allure, each bottle was inscribed with the following pledge: “From the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe, we tender this premium beer for your enjoyment as a tribute to your good taste. It comes from the mountain springs to you.” Those heartfelt remarks, stiff as an unrehearsed Knights of Columbus toast, concluded with the number “33,” a throwaway reference that could only be meant to puzzle central Pennsylvannia retirees, student journalists, and others with plenty of time on their hands.

Rolling Rock was destined to become an early accoutrement of geek-chic. Just after the local Latrobe owners were ready to sell, it fell to the new bosses, the Labatt folks out of London, Ont., to pair the unchanging Rock label with David Byrne’s affecting lyric, “Same as it ever was.” Presto. Out of all the dozens of tiny independent Quaker State beer brands that were still hanging in at the tail end of the 1980s (Bartels! Gibbons! Stegmeier!), only Rolling Rock was acknowledged to be cool. Some college kids, last night`s puke still stuck to their Converse All-Stars, affectionately called it Green Death, confusing Rolling Rock with Mickey`s Big Mouth, an overproof midwestern malt liquor.

Edgy coolness, of course, is always the first signal of the coming death-rattle. Labatt was bought by Belgians, who saw to it that Rolling Rock was available in places it never belonged, such as smart pubs in the West End of London, where it was served alongside Stella Artois and other things consumed by poseurs in PriMark lesiureware. The Brits, a thirsty race, never swallowed the “33″ mystique, and didn’t know Latrobe from Le Freak. Meanwhile, the Belgians were occupied trying to control the planet’s beer consumption, and slowly nurturing quirky little brands is not part of their business plan. They ditched Rolling Rock in 2006, pocketing $82 million from Anheuser-Busch.

The A-B management team wasted no time in determining exactly what made Rolling Rock special, and then they blew it all up. Glass-lined tanks? Get rid of them. Old Latrobe? Screw that. Production was moved to a New Jersey factory, and the brand image was further destroyed by introducing a range of indifferent new products. The Belgians, fortified with a new brain trust of cut-throat Brazilian executives, which sounds like some kind of joke but isn`t, turned their sights to Busch family themselves, those fat `n` happy St. Louis mouth-breathers who tended Bud and Michelob, and were barely aware that they`d acquired Rolling Rock. Fifty-two billion bucks convinced the Busch bunch to part with their family legacy. By that point Rock sales had already fallen by a third within five years, and A-B was promoting the stuff with a sad slogan, “Born Small Town,” which underlined how the once-proud suds were pumped out alongside Bud ’n' whatnot next to a Hess refinery just off the New Jersey Turnpike.

Picturesque setting in which to imagine your beer being made

A more honest slogan would have been, ’We just don’t care.’

Well, then, here’s a surprise. The Wall Street Journal today reports that the Belgians, now calling themselves Anheuser-Busch InBev, are looking to unload Rolling Rock for a second time. They engaged Lazard Freres to go find a buyer, but were disappointed when the merchant bankers came back and said, ”No one’s willing to pay any serious money now that you idiots have destroyed the brand.” (It emerges that the Latrobe brewery, and with it any claim to continuity or legitimacy, was earlier parceled off separately to a group from Wisconsin.)

That leaves a couple of schleppers who may still be interested in picking up Rolling Rock, if the price is right. The most logical fit would be with KPS Capital Partners, which recently bought the old Genessee plant in Rochester, N.Y., and also purchased the rights to distribute Labatt stateside, which for practical purposes means metropolitan Detroit, western New York, and a couple of counties in Connecticut. Restoring the Genesee brand has proven to be a mug’s game, and my guess is that Rolling Rock isn’t about to start rolling uphill, either. With retail and tavern space tightly controlled by a couple of dominant suppliers, and with thousands of new products emerging annually from the beverage industry, it’s hard to picture the precise niche for a flattened brewski with a 1930s pedigree.

It’s just as easy these days to pay a qualified Mumbai graphic designer $75 to design a brand new logo and fresh product identity. Of course, what you can’t buy — or buy back — for $75 is your soul, and you’d be setting the stage for tragedy if you thought you could try. Rolling Rock had one: a distinctly American, pre-War soul that would have much to say to us right now in our current circumstances, except that it`s silent, quiet as the late thoroughbred sleeping next to the guy who crossed the Corleones. So, here’s our Belgian-inspired ”tribute to your good taste.” Drink up your Bud, asshole, and be like everyone else.

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• Mitch doesn’t quite get around to sampling Molson Canadian 67 in this November 2009 post