CHICAGO – Dick Leinenkugel has logged countless hours in Texas and Southern California lately, spreading the gospel of shandies in locales with abundant sunshine and underdeveloped craft beer markets.
"I think we're poised for a very big year," said Leinenkugel, 58, president of the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company.
As the craft beer industry continues to boom, Chicago-based MillerCoors — purveyor of mainstream beers like Miller Lite and Coors Light — is responding by doubling down on Blue Moon and Leinenkugel, the two top sellers in its Tenth and Blake craft and imports division. Beginning next month, quirky television commercials will attempt to introduce consumers throughout the U.S. to Leinenkugel: "German-style beer crafted with the spirit of Wisconsin."
Meanwhile, Blue Moon Brewing Co., best known for its Belgian White ale, is unleashing its own promotional barrage, including its first new packaging in more than 20 years, an ad campaign, and, this summer, the opening of a brewery in Denver's burgeoning craft beer scene in the River North art district.
It's all about staying relevant in a competitive craft beer landscape, said Ashley Selman, MillerCoors vice president of marketing. "We just need to keep introducing ourselves and to make ourselves accessible."
Last summer, millennials in consumer focus groups informed MillerCoors that the Blue Moon packaging was "dark, lonely and weirdly mystical," Selman said.
The new look is brighter and cleaner than the old, and intended to better represent the experience of having a Blue Moon Belgian White in a glass at a bar, typically garnished with an orange slice, she said.
With Leinenkugel, the challenge is to increase its following beyond the Great Lakes. One of the new ads features a multiracial group of 20- and 30-somethings — each with an instrument — camping on the banks of a river and drinking Summer Shandy. A moose swims by as they slowly groove into a shuffling, old-timey rendition of Boston's "More Than a Feeling."
