Marketing Museum

Budweiser: A short history of advertising during prohibition

Marc — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 17:59:20 +0000

Budweiser: An American Marketing Icon

Budweiser, an American icon and a beer brand that is well known beyond US borders, has always been famous and loved for its marketing activities. From the TV-advert campaign that made a whole generation greeting each other on the phone with “Whassup” to high-budget Super Bowl commercials and beyond.

But even in times before events like the Superbowl existed and when TV advertising was not invented yet, Budweiser was a marketing pioneer and well ahead of its time, even in difficult times like the prohibition.

The beginnings

But let’s go step by step, the roots of the brewery lay (no surprise) in another beer-loving country, Germany. Eberhard Anheuser was born in 1806 in the small German town of Kreuznach. After emigrating to the United States in 1842 he became a successful businessman as a candle and soap manufacturer. With the money he earned, he continuously invested in the already existing “Bavarian Brewery” which he completely owned by 1860. Ten years later he allowed his son-in-law Adolphus Busch to join the company, the business name of Anheuser-Busch as such has its origins in the company’s family ties.

Besides the strong family bond, one reason why Anheuser-Busch became such a powerful company was the vision of Adolphus Busch, to create a national beer brand for the USA. The company, therefore, was looking towards their European roots, and focused on a pale lager type of beer Bohemian immigrants from the city of Budweis took with them into the US.

As Pilsner beer is a beloved beer type all over Germany, the decision for a Pilsner for a new national beer by Anheuser and Busch, therefore, was an easy decision and the famous US beer brand Budweiser was born and became a registered trademark in 1878.

To become a truly national beer, Adolphus Busch invested in cooling storage facilities across the US railway network to ensure the cooling of his product especially for long-distance transports, and thus provided a nationwide quality of his beer which led to high popularity and the success of the brand.

Die Prohibition in den USA

The ever-growing popularity of the Budweiser brand however was confronted with the political proposal by the US congress in 1917 to ban alcoholic drinks in the United States, as the early 20th century saw excesses in the personal consumption of alcohol which raised political concerns about the wellbeing of US-citizens. With the 18th amendment of the United States Constitution which was ratified by the US congress i.e. the requisite number of states in 1919 the prohibition of alcohol became a fact and lasted from 1920 till 1933.

This was a shock for all companies producing alcoholic beverages like Anheuser-Busch, as it caused a threat to the existence of the family business. Whereas the 18th amendment to the Constitution imposed a ban on alcoholic sales, the advertisement of such was not a part of the ban itself. Furthermore, even though the regular sales of alcohol was prohibited, the legal execution was lacking enforcement of local authorities. As such, loopholes existed, e.g. which allowed the sale of alcoholic products for medical reasons. Nevertheless, if you are not allowed to legally sell standard alcoholic beverages, companies were exposed to high risk if they still did, as in case of legal prosecution if they would get caught but also by the damaged reputation of the brand.

Budweiser, respectively the brand’s owner Anheuser-Busch solved the situation from different angles. They continued to advertise their brand Budweiser with emotional and patriotic ads, they joined an anti-prohibition movement, but also pushed existing non-alcohol products like their malt and frozen egg products and even came up with a new non-alcoholic beverage, to tackle the declining sales of alcoholic products.

With their patriotic ads, they included famous pioneers and heroes like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and many others to create and strengthen an emotional bond, in times when people were missing alcoholic beverages.

On the other hand, ads that were advertising the health benefits of Budweiser e.g. after sportive exercises or in general where Budweiser was displayed as liquid bread addressed the audience in favor of the alcohol ban.

And then there was Bevo, a clever strategic movement of Anheuser-Busch that introduced the near beer brand to the American people. Bevo initially was introduced to the United States Armed Forces, which already had to deal with an alcohol ban in 1916. Thus, Anheuser-Busch was able to push the product nationwide during the prohibition in 1920 and provided anyone who wanted to have a close-to-beer experience with Bevo. Anheuser-Busch also heavily invested in the Marketing of Bevo as the ads, but also the merchandise example does show, see below. Only a few years before the end of the ban, the production of Bevo was discontinued in 1927, which makes Bevo truly a prohibition phenomenon.

With their clever marketing strategies concerning product variety and emotional advertising techniques, Anheuser-Busch and respectively Budweiser managed to survive the prohibition period and continued to become one of the largest breweries in the world and the synonym for American beer and stays true to its focus on marketing. We are curious about what the future brings for Budweiser and what kind of clever ads they will come up with in the future.

Below, we feature some extraordinary but surprisingly not so famous examples of Budweiser advertising campaigns during prohibition which appeared in famous newspapers of the time.

Anheuser-Busch & Budweiser ads during prohibition:

About this article:
Author: Marc Brida, Marketing Museum
In cooperation with the American Marketing Association, Charleston

Welcome to Marketing Museum

Marc — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 17:17:37 +0000

Welcome to Marketing Museum!

We are a non-profit and research oriented museum project focusing on the exciting history of marketing.

We started our activities throughout 2020 and are aiming to establish several further milestones in the coming years. In 2020 we completed our first goal to establish a digital museum which helps to promote the concept of free knowledge to promote the understanding of marketing history throughout the marketing and history community worldwide. Additionally, we will create a physical archive of different materials relevant to the field of marketing history in order to fulfill another part of our mission, the conservation of marketing history.

Why the worlds needs a Marketing Museum

It seems that the word marketing has become a common term in everybody’s life. Furthermore, marketing is a popular profession both in the academic world and as a business profession. Most marketing activities however deal with current activities and short term marketing development. The history of marketing however is a rather small section in the public awareness. As many scholars agree, an understanding of its own history is very important to truly understand one’s profession and helps us to learn from developments that already happened in the past. This helps us in our current decision making in a fast paced marketing environment. And apart from all the rational reasons why an understanding of marketing history is important it is also a very interesting activity to discover the rich history of marketing and all the surrounding ideas, events and people that surround this field of study.

Our digital museum will continuously grow by adding blog articles on marketing history as well as additional content to the exhibition and history section. In this context we are working together with organisations like Universities, corporate businesses and important people in the marketing and history community.

Our Values (Vision & Mission)

Vision

To establish a Marketing Museum as a digital and physical monument in order to conserve the global marketing heritage and to share the marketing legacy with the public.

Mission

We are taking part in the global network of marketing history stakeholders. By conducting and communicating research in marketing history we are contributing to the understanding and the legacy of marketing history. By providing free education about the history of marketing we are helping to increase the public awareness of the importance of marketing heritage towards individuals, academic institutions and further organisations.

What marketing means to us

Marketing has many faces, if one would ask different individuals or institutions they would end up with a large amount of different explanations of what marketing means to them. Marketing can be seen from many different angles, the easiest comparison can be made between the marketing practice which also includes the human behaviour i.e. a social technique that can be traced back to around 40,000 years and the theory of marketing which can be traced back to the brink of the 19th and 20th century.

For us marketing practice in the context of its own history is a creative approach to increase awareness and is a method that contributes to achieve a defined outcome of desire. Thus, many other fields that are serving this interest are considered as well, e.g. design, distribution and alike.

The theory of marketing on the other hand focuses on the intellectual research on marketing, whether this may have occurred for individual or commercial benefit as well as creating an academic theory of marketing.

The Blog

The blog consists of articles researched by the Marketing Museum. Each article follows academic principles and includes accredited sources. The blog articles will cover all kinds of topics that are related to the history of marketing e.g. academic developments in marketing theory, early examples of marketing practice, background stories on business history, reports of events and much more.

Also each entry in the history timeline will receive an own blog article so readers can get more insights on each milestone in marketing history.

The history timeline

Our history timeline includes milestones in marketing history. Milestones are considered to be events or contributions of individuals, businesses or institutions that introduced, excelled or adapted marketing activities or concepts that changed the course of marketing theory or practice.

We will continuously add individual blog articles to each marketing history milestone which also can be viewed by clicking on the corresponding milestone entry. These blog articles will include more information on each milestone and why it is important in the context of marketing history.

The exhibition

Our digital exhibition includes pictures, videos or alike that were provided to us with friendly permission of companies or organisations and own photographs of Marketing Museum as well as media that is commonly available by public domain.

The exhibition includes media files that are used throughout the website e.g. our history timeline as well as the blog and are extended with additional files that fit our exhibition section e.g. famous marketing quotes.

Networking

Wherever possible we will actively take part as member in national and international organisations that contribute to marketing history.

In the long run, we are also looking for partnerships with organisations that will be able to support our goal to establish a physical presence where our archive material i.e. our collection may be displayed for the public.

We also welcome individuals and organisations to work with us e.g. by contributing to our blog as authors or with content on marketing history. Through our website and social media channels we support the exchange and connection of likeminded individuals that want to take part in the global marketing history community!

Stay tuned for more activities and follow us on our social networks to make sure to not miss any content shared by us!