Blog Entries by Andrew Kaplan

Now Playing at a Theater Near You

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: beverage, movies

It’s July, one of my favorite times of the year. Summertime not only means longer days, summer vacations and a more laid back pace to life overall, but for movie fans, like myself, it’s a pretty special time of the year. There’s just something wonderful about escaping the summer heat into the air-conditioned coolness of the movie theater. 

And for beverage companies, summer movies have meant more innovative tie-ins. As the blockbusters have gotten bigger, so too have the promotions beverage companies are building around them, especially given the rise of social media. One recent example is Mountain Dew’s tie-in with the third installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Mountain Dew went live in mid-June with an online hub at DEWGothamCity.com providing fans a deeper look at the Dark Knight franchise and exclusive content before the film’s opening on July 20.

If it’s not a promotional tie-in like Mountain Dew’s and Batman, then it’s all about product placement. With the summer movies in full swing, I started thinking about where beverage brands have popped up in the past.

One of the most successful product placements ever didn’t actually have to do with a beverage, so I’m cheating right off the bat. But you really can’t mention product placement in movies without recalling how E.T. took to those Reese’s Pieces. I was just a teenager, but I still recall the headlines about how sales of the candies skyrocketed and how M&M executives were kicking themselves for passing on the opportunity.

As for beverages, one of my favorite product placements doesn’t really feature a product at all, but a logo. It’s the scene in “Superman II” when Superman tosses the villain Zod right into an enormous Coca-Cola billboard. The billboard bursts into flames and sparks, beautifully illuminating the iconic “Enjoy Coca-Cola” logo like fireworks on the 4th of July. Using the backdrop of the ubiquitous and familiar Coke logo for this scene ingeniously blended reality with the fiction of a comic book movie—and added a great touch of humor at the same time. Brilliant product placement!

A close second, again, doesn’t actually feature a shot of the beverage product itself, but a memorable desire for one instead. It’s the late Dennis Hopper expressing his—rather enthusiastic, shall we say—preference for “Pabst Blue Ribbon!” over Heineken in Blue Velvet.

Space doesn’t permit me to list more examples here, so if I missed your favorite beverage product placement on the big screen, visit my blog at beverageworld.com. This column is also posted there and you can list your own favorites. Enjoy the summer, and the movies!  

Call for Entries: 2012 Global Packaging Design Awards

Category: General Blogs

Beverage World is now accepting entries for its 2012 Global Packaging Design Awards. The awards, to be chosen this fall, will recognize the best in beverage packaging design from around the world.

Click here for the latest information on how to enter: http://www.beverageworld.com/userfiles/documents/0712_PackagingAwards_R6.pdf

Please Note: The deadline for submissions has changed to Friday, August 24th. Also, the awards are open to any packages introduced between August 1, 2011 and August 1, 2012.

Teaching the World to Sing

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: beverage, soft drink

The beverage business certainly gets its share of criticism these days. But recently I’ve been thinking about how much good it does in the world. Good that goes completely unnoticed by the mass media.

I’ve touched on this issue before in this column, most recently in the one titled, “So Much Bad News!,” which ran in April’s Beverage World, and on our website. In that column I discussed how the media loves to harp on all the bad things about the beverage business because a lot of it can be pretty sensational. And also, I offered, because our industry is taken for granted. People have come to just expect their bottle of soda or water or beer or wine will be there for them whenever they want it.

However, in the past few days I’ve been really appreciating how this industry’s importance stretches beyond just bringing much-needed beverages to consumers. I’ve begun to see it as a truly uplifting force for not only the consumer, but for those who work in it all over the world.

This fact has always kind of been in the back of my mind as an editor covering this industry. For example, when I received an e-mail several months ago from a reader in Nepal, it made me appreciate the far reach not only of our magazine, but of the beverage business itself. I like to consider myself a pretty worldly person. But I must admit that my knowledge of Nepal didn’t consist of much more than Mount Everest. It just never occurred to me that somewhere in that country there must be a soft drink bottler, and a Coca-Cola one to boot. But why shouldn’t there be? It makes all the sense in the world that there is.

What I am getting at is that the far reach of the beverage business, thanks to the incredible success of its major players like Coca-Cola, has touched every part of the globe. And brought with it all the knowledge and business acumen it has accumulated over the years.

A good example is the recent news that a Palestinian bottler of Coke, the Ramallah-based National Beverage Company Coca-Cola/Cappy, has won an award from the Coke system for sustainable development in Africa and Eurasia. An article from the Ma’an News Agency quoted the company’s general manager Imad Al-Hindi: “For more than 14 years, the company has been producing a variety of high quality local and international beverages including juices, carbonated drinks, and mineral waters. The Palestinian market is full of obstacles and hardships, which the company turned into motives to serve the Palestinian society.”

The article goes on to say that the company also sponsors projects to support youth and children, sports, health, environment and education in Palestine. Despite all the strife in that region of the world, these Coke employees in Palestine go about their jobs on a daily basis producing soft drinks—and they do so in a sustainable way, no less. It’s truly a testament to their own work ethic and to the pride being part of the great global Coke system must give them. And also to the ability of the beverage business to serve as a global platform that lifts up everyone who touches it. It can be an island of normalcy in a world that, as we all know, can be extremely chaotic and challenging at times.

The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: water, bottled water

The bottled water ban movement has been raging for quite a while. But until now it was mostly about governments and college campuses banning the use of bottled water within the confines of their own property. That is, until now.

In late April, Concord, Mass. (yes, that Concord, Mass.—the same one where a little thing called the American Revolution started) voted to ban the sale of single-serve PET bottled water in town. Only, not just in government offices, but anywhere within the borders of Concord. Yes, that includes any store in Concord. Stores that violate the ban could be fined up to $50 for every offense.

Could the anti-bottled water advocates finally have gone too far? I’d predict, yes.

As of this writing, it’s not clear if the new law will be overturned before it goes into effect in January 2013. The law now goes to the state’s attorney general for review. One article I read said it very well may be upheld.

Concord now joins only one other town in the entire world in banning all sales of single-serve PET water within its confines: Bundanoon, Australia. That suddenly famous Australian town passed its ban in July of 2009.

Upon hearing of Concord’s decision, I immediately started wondering if the townsfolk of one of the most important historical locations in the U.S.A. ever read their history?

If they did, they’d be familiar first and foremost with the dismal history of Prohibition. But this decision by Concord actually reminds me more of the tax hikes on cigarettes in the nineties, an effort to raise funds while curbing smoking. I was an editor of a different trade publication back then and watched this story unfold as the taxes had some unexpected results. Nearby Indian reservations, not subject to the tax hikes, kept their cigarette prices low and consumers began buying instead from them. They’d load the trunks of their cars up with cartons, drive home and be all set.

What do the citizens of Concord expect to happen? Don’t they see that their new “Warrant Article 32, the Drinking Water in Single-Serving PET Bottles Bylaw,” will only serve one purpose: to harm their local retailers who will undoubtedly lose business to the neighboring towns with no ban?

The bottled water category has been doing excellent business as of late. Just take a look at the State of the Industry 2012 report in this very issue you are holding. It grew at its fastest rate (4.1 percent) since 2007 last year, in the midst of a deep recession. Consumers love the convenience of it. And the industry is trying very hard to be as environmentally responsible as possible, dramatically reducing the amount of plastic in every bottle.

Concord went too far in passing this law and I predict it will eventually realize it. Hopefully, the shot heard ’round the world against the bottled water industry in Concord will be loud enough for other municipalities around the country to hear and take notice of before they too make the same mistake. 

So Much Bad News!

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: beer, beverage, soft drink, marketing

I also thought of entitling this column, ‘We don’t get no respect!’ Either headline would work. What I am referring to is something that has been in the background of the beverage business for a long time: how consistently negative the coverage of this industry is by the mainstream news media.

Let me prove my point. Here’s a list, off the top of my head, of some of the ongoing news stories related to our industry we see in the headlines each week: Alcohol abuse, the obesity epidemic, energy drinks and teens, carcinogens in sodas, carcinogens in cans, drunken driving, water shortages, fungicide in orange juice, fizzling soda sales. Like I said, that’s just off the top of my head. I know there are plenty of others.

We all work in a business that many of us are quite proud to be associated with, and yet swirling around us every day is this cloud of negativity being constantly pushed by the 24-hour modern-day news cycles. Each day, it seems, there’s some new piece of bad news eating away at our industry—and our sense of pride in what we do.

The latest target of a lot of the media has been Pepsi, really ever since brand Pepsi dropped from being No. 2 to No. 3 behind Coke and Diet Coke. It all makes for dramatically entertaining news, and it sells papers and boosts website visits I’m sure.

Here’s another example from FoxNews.com, from a story titled: “The Surprising Health Benefits of Beer.” “If you’ve got party plans this weekend, don’t be afraid to knock back a cold one,” the story begins. “Beer has several surprising health benefits. Despite beer’s bad reputation, it actually has a number of natural antioxidants and vitamins that can help prevent heart disease and even rebuild muscle. It also has one of the highest energy contents of any food or drink. Of course, this means you need to set limits—one beer gets you going, four makes you fat.” Even this good news is reluctantly spewed forth, couched in warnings and encouragements to move beyond our fears of a beverage that’s been loved by billions since, well, Ancient Egypt!

How did we come to find ourselves the constant butt of jokes, warnings and criticism? Part of the reason I think is that beverages are just so taken for granted by the modern day world, that it’s a dog-bites-man kind of thing. The only thing the news media think is of interest are the sensational or the downright negative. Perhaps if we sold iPads rather than soda pop, we’d get a little better press? (Bad example. Sometimes they don’t like you just because you’re too successful, too.)

Well here’s a solution. Maybe beverage companies should show off to the general public just what it is they do. Make it clear that producing, distributing and marketing a beverage is hard, complicated work and shouldn’t be taken for granted. That’s a story we tell in Beverage World each month. Maybe it’s time the rest of the world heard it too.