
PBR Sells Out; Hipsters Responsible - andrewbadera
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/PBR-Sells-Out-Hipsters-Responsible-94944874.html
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harshpotatoes
Wait, hipsters drank PBR because they thought it was not popular? I thought
they drank it because it was cool to pretend to be a redneck. Also because
it's cheap, and it's also cool to pretend you're poor.

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pasbesoin
_These "younger drinkers" looking to make a "non-mainstream" statement --
a.k.a. hipsters -- made the beer so successful that the company felt
comfortable raising prices without risking their customer following._

I guess everything old is eventually new again. I remember when the statement
Pabst made was that you were looking to get hammered for cheap (but maybe a
step above "cheapest").

Perhaps of related interest, the Schlitz brand was snapped up a couple of
years ago by a large distributor in the area, where one of the younger
generation of the family business intended to relaunch -- returning to the
circa 1930's recipe -- as a premium craft brew.

There appears to be a significant lingering value being assigned to these
brands, regardless of their intervening depreciation.

I wonder just how sticky is the presence of such public brands. And whether
there is a common interval between their degradation and renewal; some
timeframe short enough that they remain in the memory of a younger generation,
but long enough that the accumulated or final negative connotations have been
lost or don't carry significance with them.

In the tech world, IBM seemed to go through something somewhat similar with
regard to brand when it sort of embraced open source (which surge in brand
value we seem to be moving beyond). And HP has worked to unbury itself from
its "Compaqification". Mentioning these is a stretch in terms of comparison,
but the industry is young enough that the long term role of brands seems
something of an open question.

