Despite pissing off countless representatives from some of our nation’s top college, Anheuser-Busch InBev still plans on releasing their “Fan Can” for those campuses that are cool with it. The Bud Light packaging will use a particular college’s colors on the label, though the logo or mascot is absent. Nevertheless, the FTC quickly jumped on this issue.
But the campaign drew criticism from Janet Evans, a senior attorney with the Federal Trade Commission who oversees alcohol advertising, and from certain colleges because the cans could encourage underage drinking on their campuses.
“We’ve told them we don’t ever want to see a campaign like this again,” Evans said Wednesday. “We’re concerned about the promotion because it’s targeted to college campuses where there are a large number of binge drinkers and underage persons in the audience.”
“This is a voluntary program made available to all wholesalers nationwide, and roughly half of our wholesalers are participating,” Carol Clark, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president for corporate social responsibility, said in a statement.
Fan Can, she said, was “expressly timed to coincide with the beginning of the football season and baseball playoffs.”
But some universities in the targeted regions, such as Boston College and the University of Colorado, argued that the colored cans infringe on their trademarks and incorrectly hinted that the colleges were endorsing the program, even though the colleges’ names and logos are not on the cans.
Michigan, Oklahoma State, Wisconsin, Iowa State and Minnesota also objected, according to published reports.
As a result, Anheuser-Busch has told those schools that complained that it would drop the program in their areas, Dunn said.
You have to laugh a little reading this, sensing the angered tone of the college and FTC reps compared with the cool demeanor of those from Anheuser-Busch. I understand where the resentment is coming from, but to think that this type of promotion is geared towards underage drinkers is a bit off. I doubt I’m the only one who doesn’t think that a label’s colors entice a college student to drink more than they normally would. When I was in college, I wanted a beer because I was in college, not because of the look of the can. Thinking of the type of swill I drank back then, the labels often flaunted the color combination of a sports teams that I despised. Hey, I still like to have a Budweiser every now and then. What colors do they use on their can? Red and white. Well, I’m not too keen on the Red Sox, or the Cavaliers for that matter. Oh yeah, I like beer.
If the colors on a label are an actual cause of the rampant drinking in college, then things are much worse than I thought.
