What's Happening Across Beverages

On the Coke side of life, there’s apparently some hot coffee.

The soda giant has begun marketing a pair of hot beverages, both a pod-based coffee system called “Far Coast” for on-premise businesses and a coffee and tea service dubbed “Chaqwa” for convenience retailers. The program brewed in Toronto, Oslo and Singapore.

The move is apparently an attempt to leverage on Coke’s already widespread dispensed vending business. While there is no consumer-based Far Coast program, the company is nevertheless opening a few concept stores to demonstrate the products.

Udaiyan Jatar leads Coca-Cola’s Global Premium Brewed Beverage business. Who knew Coke even had a premium brewed beverage business? Coke has long sold coffee drinks in Japan, where Georgia Coffee is doing very well, but this is almost a food service push.

According to Jatar, “Far Coast was created to provide [customers] with a window into different cultures through our range of delicious brews and infusions.”

Far Coast is expected to be offered in the U.S. in the near future.

Joining it soon? A new PepsiCo/Starbucks joint venture in hot beverage vending that provides a 9 oz., heatshielded can from a machine. File under: coffee wars.

BUD.TV

In this Tivo-centric era, no matter how good your advertising, it’s getting harder to get viewer attention.

Anheuser Busch has decided to deal with this problem by launching its own network – online. Branded content will deal with sports, beer, chicks, beer, funny catchphrases, beer, light beer, and beer.

Since things aren’t operational yet – they’re saying Bud.TV will launch in the spring, we’ve decided to try to help Bud out with its early-stage programming.

Some show ideas:

1. Married, with Children (Who aren’t really children anymore, but are of legal drinking age, and really, really like beer!) – This reality show, featuring case studies from the Millennial Generation, follows the stories of millenials who enjoy beer so much that they’ve decided to never leave home. Host: Bud Bundy

2. Bush, the Early Years – When he was young and stupid, he said, he did a lot of things that were young and stupid. Guess what? A lot of them involved beer. Guest starring tennis great and co-carouser-in-chief John Newcombe.

3. Real World: St. Louis – A group of young adults from the Millennial Generation, recently kicked out of their parents’ homes, move to St. Louis to become tour guides at the Budweiser Brewery.

4. The Spuds McKenzie Cheerleader Review – In this dramatic, made-for-Bud.TV movie, an aging bull terrier, dying of silicon poisoning, remembers his past owners.

5. Pardon the Interruption – Sportswriters Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, loaded on the free beer available in the press box, belch.

6. The Teletubbies – What happens when Bud-drinking couch potatoes take a bath.

7. The Joe Namath Celebrity Telethon – “You’re all so generous! I really want to kiss you!”

PLANNING A DESERT EXPEDITION? YOU NEED THIS.

Sportline, a company that produces “Personal Fitness Monitors” like Pedometers and Stopwatches, recently introduced the Hydracoach, a digital water bottle that actually tells you when you’re less than optimally hydrated.

Billed as “the first product developed that actually helps people adhere to the experts’ recommendations for drinking the right amount of water on a daily basis,” it allows drinkers to track their daily water consumption on a sip-by-sip basis. Even better, a coaching feature allows the bottle to actually annoy you if it feels you haven’t been drinking enough.

Trust us. If you actually think you need this product, the problem isn’t that you haven’t been drinking enough water. It’s that you’ve consumed far too much of something else, and now you’re drunk.

MARKETING TO MOMS

The official soft drink advertising counterinsurgency has begun.

After agreeing to pull full-calorie sodas from schools, the three largest soft drink makers and the American Beverage Association have taken the next step by sponsoring advertisements to encourage young consumers to eat and drink healthily.

Soda makers have borne the brunt of America’s rising tide of obesity complaints, and have begun trying to make over their images in relation to parents and their children. As such, they have begun a $10 million magazine ad campaign, featured below.

The advertisements will take a humorous approach, displaying kids and teenagers in everyday situations, thinking about nutrition. There may be another phase if this one proves successful.

DIAGEO GOES ALUMINUM

Remember those great canned Beam-and-Colas you used to drink outside the tailgates? They’re coming back.

Diageo is testing 12 oz. ready-todrink spirit-based cocktails in aluminum cans, according to Advertising Age. In Tampa, ground zero for the test, the 5 percent alcohol-byvolume cans are doing great, and that’s before the Georgia-Florida game.

According to Beer Business Daily’s Harry Schumacher, the cans show that Diageo, which has experienced massive growth as the spirits category has shot into the stratosphere, is thinking about moving into drinking occasions that used to be centered around beer.

The cocktail brands involved Captain Morgan and Cola, Smirnoff Vodka and Lemon Lime Soda, George Dickel Whisky and Cola, and Seagram’s 7 Whiskey and Lemon-Lime Soda. Branded on the label with the liquor brand, they may move national next year.