MillerCoors withdraws from industry beer campaign over corn syrup row

USA | In response to AB-InBev’s Super Bowl ad, which rubbished its rival for its use of corn syrup, MillerCoors has pulled out of a meeting with AB-InBev, Constellation Brands and Heineken, scheduled for March 2019. During the meeting, the three brewers were to decide on generic campaigns in support of the overall beer category, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Pete Marino, MillerCoors’ Chief Communications Officer, told the Wall Street Journal that working on the campaign, which has been discussed for more than a year, would be a “waste of time and money” for as long as AB-InBev spends millions of dollars “demonising beer ingredients”.

Previously, AB-InBev and MillerCoors had taken to the internet to woo disgruntled farmers. In February 2019, MillerCoors launched the hashtag #ToastToFarmers, a promotional internet device to help track and promote MillerCoors’ appreciation of farmers.

MillerCoors thinks that, by denigrating corn syrup, AB-InBev has actually rendered MillerCoors a service in that it took attention away from MillerCoors’ underwhelming 2018 full year results. Its parent, Molson Coors, on 12 February 2019, reported an annual net sales decline of 2.1 percent and a 28.7 percent decrease in annual net income.

AB-InBev, meanwhile, has hijacked the #ToastToFarmers hashtag. Its brand “Busch Beer” posted a tweet, declaring that every retweet would mean a USD 5 donation to Farm Rescue. Farm Rescue is a non-profit organisation, which helps family farms and ranches when faced with crises.

USA Today, a newspaper, reported that the tweet received approximately 41,000 retweets. This means that AB-InBev will donate USD 205,000 to Farm Rescue.

AB-InBev also quickly established a Toast to Farmers URL, which redirects to Busch Beer’s website to further push their claim over the hashtag.