Headline: Bud Light's New Can Is Trying to Distract You From the Real Problem With Beer Today
Really? That's quite the job. Hate to work for that ad agency. Alright, redesign our label to boost sales, but just so you know there are underlying concerns about the beer industry, and we don't want anyone to know them. So come up with something eye-catching, but confuses and discourages additional intellectual inquiry. The article eventually cites the problem, which is consolidation. The big brewers are buying craft brewers. So? They're not changing the recipes. But we have to find something wrong with things, or what's the point of being a Gawker blog.
The result of the redesign:
That's nice. Better than the predecessors.
As the article notes, every brand had its swoosh phase. The Time of Swoosh has passed, though, and redesigns are rolling through every aisle of the grocery store. Everyone wants the badge of authenticity bestowed by hand-written text and simple letterpress graphics.
Here's something they tried last year:
That's very 80s. This Adweek piece of puffery said:
Probably so. The printing technology was capable of 32 million permuntations, which means each can was unique. Somewhere in someone's basement is a substantial collection of the cans, and somewhere some day there will be a descendent at an antique store, dismayed that these things aren't worth very much money.
