PBR PR

The Marketing of No Marketing (ROB WALKER, June 22, 2003, NY Times Magazine)

The trend-explaining industry has mostly framed the rise of P.B.R. as part of an alleged ''retro-chic'' movement. Of course, iterations of retro-chic (Fiestaware, cocktail music, etc.) have bubbled through the culture for a decade or more now. A subset ''white trash'' theory links P.B.R. to Levi's (whose sales have actually fallen) and trucker hats (a fad that was revealed and snuffed out almost simultaneously, when Ashton Kutcher wore one on his MTV show, ''Punk'd''). One zeitgeistmeister has even suggested that P.B.R. drinkers were inspired by the blue-collar heroes of 9/11.

A person who has put a lot of thought into P.B.R. is Alex Wipperfurth, of a San Francisco marketing boutique called Plan B, whose clients have included Napster and Doc Martens. He has a particular interest in brands whose identity is created not by their owners but by consumers. Plan B did a little consulting work for Pabst last year, and Wipperfurth includes P.B.R. in a book he's completing called ''Brand Hijack.'' To Wipperfurth, P.B.R., a long-withered brand, had few negative connotations. A false rumor that Pabst was about to go out of business (untrue) worked for some as a ''rallying cry.'' P.B.R.'s scarcity, and its cheapness, also helped make it an ''underground darling.''

The single key text in Neal Stewart's codification of the meaning of P.B.R. is the book ''No Logo,'' by the journalist Naomi Klein. Published in 2000, ''No Logo'' is about the incursion of brands and marketing into every sphere of public life, the bullying and rapacious mind-set that this trend represents and evidence of a grass-roots backlash against it, especially among young people. Klein's view is that this would feed a new wave of activists who targeted corporations. Stewart's view is that the book contains ''many good marketing ideas.'' He says it ''really articulated the feelings, the coming feelings, of the consumer out there: eventually people are gonna get sick of all this stuff'' -- all this marketing -- ''and say enough is enough.''

In these circumstances, the thinking goes, P.B.R. needs to stay neutral, ''always look and act the underdog'' and not worry about those who look down on the beer, presumably because they're snobs whose negative opinion only boosts its street cred. The Plan B analysis even says that P.B.R.'s embrace by punks, skaters and bike messengers make it a political, ''social protest'' brand. These ''lifestyle as dissent'' or ''consumption as protest'' constituencies are about freedom and rejecting middle-class mores, and ''P.B.R. is seen as a symbol and fellow dissenter.'' Eventually all of this sounds like satire, but the punch line is that it isn't really that far off from P.B.R.'s strategy.

Could the fact it's good have anything to do with it? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 21, 2003 7:30 AM