Changes in "macro" beer advertising over time

Just the other day, I saw a Budweiser truck parked in the parking lot near where I work, and noticed that the slogan underneath the logo wasn't the familiar "King of Beers" but rather "The Great American Lager." And now that I think about it, the Bud ads that I've heard on the radio lately (well, Pandora, as my car doesn't have a working radio in it, but close enough) also made a point of using the word "lager" instead of or in addition to "beer," too -- I think they phrased it as "America's smoothest lager" or something like that.

I know for years I don't remember really hearing the word "lager" used much if at all in any advertising. There was Samuel Adams' Boston Lager having it right there in the name... but for the Bud, Miller, Coors, etc. ads it was always just "beer."

This made me wonder... since when have the big breweries specifically been using "lager" instead of just "beer?" Also reminded me of how it seemed like there was a point when suddenly beer ads on TV started talking about hops (Miller's "triple hops brewed" comes to mind), where they hadn't really mentioned them before. I figure Bud's "beechwood aged" is one of those things that falls into the "didn't used to be focused on or even mentioned at all, but now they always bring it up in their ads" category.

Anyone been keeping track of these sorts of changes?

 

Heh, yeah -- I definitely wasn't around to see advertising in the 19th century. When I posted this I was thinking more of changes just over the past few decades, but I imagine things have changed a lot more over the past century or so than they have in my lifetime (heck, I notice they used the German "bier" spelling in that one, that's not something you see in Bud advertising/labeling anymore.)

Interesting to see such an old label. The color scheme and general setup are all close enough to the current labels that it "feels like" a Budweiser label and you can tell that's what it is from just a glance without even reading (that "red border, white space with script-type writing, seals up above" thing), even though the actual words themselves are pretty different in a lot of places. Kinda neat that their labels are still that similar over such a long time.

Seems like beer companies may sort of go through "cycles" in advertising. Like, sometimes companies will focus on the specific ingredients and other times... not so much. Sometimes German beer terminology (lager, bier, etc.) gets used, and other times everything gets portrayed as "super American" instead.