The King of Beers

bemisnorris · Posted: 26 Feb 2004 09:18 AM Post subject: The King of Beers

The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.

Today it's the only major brewer to rely heavily on data from Information Resources Inc. -- which tracks every bar-coded product swiped at checkout and performs Nielsen-style consumer surveys -- and to conduct its own monthly surveys to see what beer drinkers buy and why. Parsing the aggregate data tells Anheuser what images or ideas to push in its ads, and what new products to unveil -- such as low-carb Michelob Ultra, Anheuser's most successful launch since Bud Light.

This data, crossed with U.S. Census figures on the ethnic and economic makeup of neighborhoods, also helps Anheuser tailor marketing campaigns with a local precision only dreamed of a few years ago.

The data reveals trends by city (Tequiza may be hot in San Antonio, but Bud Light plays better in Peoria), by neighborhood (gay models appear on posters in San Francisco's Castro district, but not on those in the Mission), by holiday (the Fourth of July is a big seller in Atlanta, but St. Patrick's Day isn't), and by class (cans for blue-collar stores, bottles for white-collar).

"They're drilling down to the level of the individual store," Thompson says. "They can pinpoint if customers are gay, Latino, 30-year-old, college-educated conservatives."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/02/25/bus2.feat.beer.network/index.html

Sounds akin to tagging a wild boar's ear to me.