“We’re going on 10 yearsnow that this trend started, and it has had unbelievable staying power,” saysNeal Stewart, who worked for Pabst from 2000 to 2006. As brand manager, andlater marketing director, Stewart worked with a team of brand ambassadors todirect and create the PBR re-branding campaigna campaign that employed anunobtrusive approach to marketing that appealed to the consumers who had begunto adopt the brand in 2000 and 2001 in the Northwest.
These initial adopterswere bike messengers in Portland, Ore.a group that, according toStewart, had created a subculture that didn’t include supporting mainstreambrands. It was unlikely that they had ever seen a PBR commercial, as PabstBrewing stopped advertising in the early ’80s; rather, they likely had grown upbeing inundated with ads from big breweries in the ’80s and ’90s.
“It didn’t have thebaggage and it didn’t have the stigma of being this big corporation,” Stewartexplains. “People thought of it as this little, tiny company trying to makeends meet.”
It was important to thegrowth of the brand that consumers continue to feel that PBR was the truealternative choice to mainstream counterparts.
“I don’t want toovercomplicate what we did,” Stewart says. “It was mainly finding people whowere really supportive of the brand and supporting their efforts.”
Pabst Blue Ribbon begansponsoring bike messenger races and scooter rallies. While bigger beer brands,like Miller (now MillerCoors) and Anheuser-Busch, were sponsoring large concertvenues and festivals, Pabst Blue Ribbon focused on smaller venues and low-levelclubs across the country, solidifying the brand as a supporter not only ofindependent live music, but of hipster culture in general. From bike messengerto bike messenger, and music fan to music fan, the buzz created by theword-of-mouth campaign generated sales in 2002, resulting in PBR’s first volumeincrease since 1978.
“We tracked it state bystate, and you could literally see it start in the Northwest and then jump tothe East Coast, and then it slowly did make its way to the middle of thecountry,” Stewart says. “Milwaukeewas a different market for us, though, because the brewery used to be there,and there was a huge backlash against Pabst… I wouldn’t say that Milwaukee was behind thetrend, because of the late adopters. But maybe it was slightly late, becausethere was baggage with the brand back then.”
The “baggage” was theclosing of Pabst’s Milwaukeebrewery in 1996, after a 152-year presence in the city. According to Milwaukee historian andauthor John Gurda, the anger felt by many Milwaukeeans was directed at theirresponsible decisions made by the brewery’s ownership, S&P Co.
“I had been a loyalPabst drinker for 30 years,” Gurda says, “and I wouldn’t touch the stuffbecause I was angry. And I don’t think I was alone. I think that there were alot of people that were really miffed that this brand had been taken over byrobber barons who drove it into the ground, ruining a proud heritage.”
After shutting down theremainder of its breweries nationwide, S&P Co. began contracting withMillerCoors (then Miller) to brew its portfolio in 2001. To Gurda, this softenssome of what he refers to as the “psychological reluctance” of re-embracingPBR, because “it’s money, it’s jobs and it’s brewed here,” he says.
