Bringing together the beer behemoths

As of yesterday, two of the world’s largest beer brands became one…say hello to Anhauser-Busch InBev.

Image: Brand New

The takeover by Belgian brewer InBev, famous for Stella Artois and Beck’s, will see them taking ground in the US market thanks to Anhauser-Busch, most recognisable for college favourite Budweiser.

As you can see from the logo and name of the new corporation, the two companies have more or less decided to squish their identities together, hoping to form ‘The Best Beer Company in a Better World’. So, how’s this going to work?

Let’s take a look at the former lives of our two companies…

InBev:  Originally a merger of Interbrew and AmBev. No prizes for seeing where the name came from… Major brands include leaders Beck’s and Stella Artois, followed by Hoegaarden, Leffe and Brahma. These have varying positioning across the world, but mostly occupy the mass-premium to premium segment.

InBev seems to have the more solid brand identity of the two. While its logo is plain at best and meaningless at worst, they claim the values ‘Dream-People-Culture’ with a focus on the customer. Community contributions seem to be centred on areas which affect their business.

Anhauser-Busch:  Mostly centred around Budweiser; previously known for its Clydesdales but now finding itself associated with a lot of frat parties. Very traditional logo, which has seen an eagle feature from the start.

AB’s tagline is that ‘making friends is our business’. With the number of environmental topics they’re trying to cover, hopefully they’re making some. Four values rotated on their frontpage; ‘innovation, tradition, people, authentic’. They seem a little confused as to whether they’re a heritage brand or trying to be cool.

There’s two very different styles and brand identities coming together here and it will be interesting to see whether they are combined or retained.

From the naming of the new identity, it looks like there will be a combination. Personally, I think that since both companies own solo brands a change in company name will have no effect on sales, leaving them free to find something less cumbersome. But it all depends – are they about tradition or innovation? We’ll see.