Promoting the National Beer of Texas

Promoting the National Beer of Texas

Jennifer A. Bunt

American InterContinental University Online

        Abstract

This paper delves into the marketing mix of Lone Star Beer from the state of Texas and its effect on the popularity of the beer nationally.  The exploration of placement and promotion will show how opportune marketing venues have increased national public awareness and interest in the product.  The company history extolls the resiliency of a Texas-born product that has thrived for over 130 years, reviving post Prohibition.  This paper examines Lone Star Brewing Company’s close relationship with Texas music artists, including sponsorship, collaborative projects and some ingenious marketing campaigns thus solidifying Lone Star Beer as one of Texans’ favorite adult beverages.  Considered to be an economy beer for many years, Lone Star is generally classified within the borders of the state of Texas as a local brew allowing the price to often be set slightly lower than many nationally recognized direct competitors.  Texans love their music and they love their beer about as much as they love being from Texas.

Promoting the National Beer of Texas

Lone Star beer is an American-style premium Lager and certainly a direct competitor to Budweiser, Coors, and Miller High Life.  It is a crisp, cold beer.  What more it there to say?  There is actually so much more to this adult beverage than one might think.  Lone Star is a Texas-born beer with a fascinating history.  The company has colorful connections to the music industry and United States historical icons and has even trademarked the product as “The National Beer of Texas” (Lone Star Brewing Company, 2016).  Jessica Hamilton of Chron.com (2016) coins it well by stating “As the name suggests, it's a beer dedicated to the culture of the Lone Star State. And it has the credentials to prove it.”

Even the packaging has a claim to the current state of common beer containers and nomenclature of that packaging style today.  Elongated necks were a bottling phenomenon that had pretty much died out in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s.  Lone Star continued to be packaged in “longneck” bottles, and revived the trend. David Blend (2014), Executive editor and author for the website Thrillest points out “It saved our necks … Lone Star … called its bottles “longnecks” internally -- noticed that bar-goers were using the nickname too, so they made things official and slapped it on labels. Sales boomed, imitators followed…”  In 1982, Wayne King (1982) writing in a tone of semi-sarcasm, plugs the popularity of the Lone Star Longneck with Texans.  The bottling company includes puzzles on the bottle caps. This is a practice that many other beverage companies have copied, but Lone Star has been doing it for many years. There is even a promotional site with the solutions to the caps available. They even have a smartphone app!