A commentary on Beer Blast Philip Van Munching 1997 Times Business/Random House 0-8129-6391-1 $24.00 309 pages. I don't like beer much. My source of alcohol culture in my formative years (the Princeton University Band) tended not to serve beer, since, per dollar, it was much cheaper to get blasted on hard liquor. I could mix Kool-aid, vodka, and sour mix with the best of them, and even as I recognized there was a world beyond "Mr. Beer" (that would be Meisterbrau, for those of you who haven't been to college recently), I didn't think there was much difference between the various brands. Apparently, I'm wrong. After reading Philip Van Munching's highly entertaining tale of how modern marketing has nearly killed the big brands, there seems to be big differences in how they go about shooting themselves in the collective foot. I always wondered why we got dancing frogs instead of "This Bud's for you," and Van Munching tells me why. Marketing in the beer business is pretty much everything---you're essentially asking people to pay absurdly high prices in bars and grocery stores for a drink that tastes like week-old apple cider. (My buddies in my high school used to bootleg mead and wine in their bedroom closets, proving that if it's the buzz you're after, you can have it for pretty cheap.) A "superpremium" brand, like Michelob Lite, is a pricier version of Miller High Life without much change in taste. An import like Heineken doesn't taste all that much different than a can of Coors (they're both light lagers), yet costs twice as much. Thus, marketing your way into the wallets of your consumers is a full-time job that is full of very public failures. Van Munching, after a brief and not particularly illuminating history of beer in America, jumps into how breweries have tried and failed to keep the wandering attention of the beer-drinking populace since the 60s. Like the chorus from a Greek tragedy, he covers dead trend after dead trend in beers, from wine coolers to low alcohol to ice to Zima Gold to lite to malt liquor. Ice died, according to Munching, because Bud Ice didn't actually use the icing process to change the taste of the brew, which confused the public about ice beers in general. Likewise, a saddened executive, looking at the ugly death of the LA fad, mutters "We've determined that people drink to get buzzed." Malt liquor was marketed directly at the destitute, underaged, and minority, leading outraged state governments to pass laws against marketing it. And the author chronicles it all in good humor. Van Munching is a marketer more than a beer-drinker. He worked for his father in the family business of importing Heineken. He acted in various capacities for the company, minding the high-class image of the Dutch beer and avoiding anything particularly crazy (Heineken Light, Heineken Micro, or Heineken Ice Dry). When his father sold the importing company to Heineken, Van Munching was aced out by new management which has pretty much tossed aside his hard work building images for ugly marketing blunders like the Heineken line of clothing. (Oy vey.) Van Munching is at his best following the stories of the failed products, while his description of his gradual ejection from his old company is more like cynical sniping from a disgruntled former employee than unbiased reporting. He never goes over the edge into unrestrained bashing or sour grapes, though; instead, he reports the the real numbers and public statements of executives with a well-developed sense of irony. His morals from these stories are simple---don't get lost in the world of theoretical marketing, and stick to producing a product people actually want. (I think he's right, unless you're really trying something new and different, like the wine cooler fad. The moral of that story seems to be sell your company right at the height of the fad.) I don't read a lot of business books, so I'm hard pressed to evaluate this one beyond the recommendation of an avid reader. I liked it; I laughed out loud a few times and marveled at the folly of the big conglomerates. It was equally creepy to find out how many of the slogans I recognized; except for Latrobe's Light-N-Lo (Van Munching says no one knew whether it was a beer or a non-dairy creamer), I had heard of every product and every slogan. Hearing the explanations for their existences was fascinating. Reading this book was like drinking a nice German light ale---smooth, tasty, and leaves you with a smile, and it only takes you an evening. I think professional beverage people will find his treatments a little quick, but for a non-industry guy like me who is looking to find explanations for the bewildering ad campaigns and blizzards of goofy beer products, this was a great pick. Read it.