Knowing your costumers emotions

As I've written in earlier posts, the sales of the larger beer companies such as Anheuser-Busch Inbev have dropped this last year. One interesting possibility as to why specifically Bud Light has lost sales is their new approach in marketing their product. No longer is Bud Light trying to market on just the emotional level, but they are now focusing on the "drinkability" of their product. An example of this would be the Bud Light commercial that aired during the superbowl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuSjNwqPFOk
While this commercial is humorous, the whole commercial is focused on pushing how drinkable the beer is. Now look at a commercial from 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJJL5dxgVaM
They both are focused on making the audience laugh, but the commercial from 2007 does not at any point discuss the taste, quality, or "drinkability" of Bud Light. It seems that Anheuser-Busch should try not to highlight the taste of their product, but instead should through their marketing create an image of those who do drink their product. They have been doing this already noticeably in both commercials, because the actors are men in their 20's, which is probably the main consumer group they market to. Once the focus changed from creating this image of a typical Bud Light drinker to the actual taste sales decreased. I don't know if they were doing this to try to compete with craft beers, but it can't work. They may have wanted to do this, because their consumer age group is now coming to like and enjoy craft beers. If the Bud Light is trying to compete in taste with craft beers then there is no contest. It will be interesting to see how Bud Light markets itself in the coming years. Well for me at least, they can try to get my attention, but if they think they can grab me by the "drinkability" of their product, it won't work.

Reference:
Mullman, Jeremy. (2010, March 26). How Research flatten bud ligh. Advertising Age.