Budweiser
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This article is about a brand of beer brewed in the United States. The original, far older, brand of beer named Budweiser is brewed in the Czech Republic; for that beer see Budweiser Budvar.
Beer, as with any food product, deteriorates quickly with age or excessive heat, so to ensure quality the company has stringent requirements for handling and sale. There are numerous Budweiser breweries located around the United States (and the rest of the world), many of which offer tours with free samples. One thing tour guides will often do is when their group reaches the hospitality room is to ask a few volunteers to try what they refer to as "punished Budweiser." This is beer stored in a room for two weeks in a high temperature environment. The comparison between fresh Budweiser, and "punished" beer serves to demonstrate beer's sensitivity to heat.
The company is known for its sports sponsorships, video game sponsorship (Tapper), and (often) humorous advertisements. Advertising campaigns have included a nude Ganymede grasping a beer bottle and borne aloft by a bald eagle, frogs saying 'bud-wei-ser', lizards doing the same, and Clydesdale horses. Recently, Miller Brewing had begun a series of commercials in which "referees" were calling "penalties" on people drinking Bud Light, and the "referees" replaced the beer with Miller beer. Anheuser-Busch responded by making their own series of "referee" commercials that shows "referees" taking Bud Light for themselves. Anheuser-Busch is also known for its repeated legal attempts to obtain complete control of the Budweiser trademark, which have been generally unsuccessful.
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Market share
Anheuser-Busch has a market share in the United States of about 50% for all of its brands of beer combined. Despite its wide commercial success in the United States, it has a very poor reputation with beer enthusiasts, both foreign and domestic, who typically object to its use of adjuncts, and to the taste of American lagers in general. In spite of that reputation, the company's 2004 annual report cites figures which demonstrate Budweiser brands are proving to be quite successful in three markets outside of the U.S.:
- in China, where Anheuser-Busch has had a brewery in Wuhan since 1995, 2.7 million barrels of Budweiser were brewed there in 2004, a number which is expected to grow to nearly 3.5 million barrels in 2005;
- in the United Kingdom, where Anheuser-Busch owns Stag Brewery in Mortlake, Budweiser is the number one on-premise, premium packaged lager and the country's number two such lager;
- in Canada, where Labatt Brewing Company brews and packages Budweiser and Bud Light for the Canadian market; Budweiser became the country's number one brand in 2004.
Budweiser is also widely available in Mexico due to Anheuser-Busch's half-ownership of Grupo Modelo, through which Budweiser (and Bud Light) are distributed. In Ireland, Budweiser is the largest off-premise beer; it is brewed, marketed, and sold by Guinness. Budweiser is also available in Italy and Argentina because of partnerships Anheuser-Busch has with major brewers there.
The name
With globalization of brands, the existence of the Czech beer of the same name has caused problems in some markets. A long-standing agreement with the Czech brewer divided the rights to the name "Budweiser," so that the Anheuser-Busch product is marketed as "Bud" (in France and elsewhere) and "Anheuser-Busch B" (Germany), where the Czech beer has the rights to the name. Anheuser-Busch has made offers to buy out the Czech brewing company in order to secure global rights to the name "Budweiser", but the Czech government has refused all such offers, considering keeping the Budweiser name Czech to be a matter of national pride.
See also
- Budweiser Budvar, brewed in the Czech Republic
External links
- Budweiser official website (http://www.budweiser.com/)
- Anheuser Busch corporate website (http://www.anheuser-busch.com/), including its annual report (http://www.anheuser-busch.com/annual/default.htm)de:Budweiser