Stop Your Wine-ing? -- Beer is Fighting Back

According to a recent Nielsen report, between 2006 and 2016, beer lost 10% of market share to wine and spirits. The largest brewer in the world, Anheuser-Busch InBev, reported that beer as a proportion of the alcohol consumed by 21-to-27-year-olds fell to 43 percent last year from 65 percent in 2006. That figure represents a steep drop over the past dozen years. Over the past few years, wine and spirit advertising has made positive inroads among young adults in places that were once the domain of beer, like sports arenas. Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors have decided to take on wine and spirits in an advertising war of sorts.

Recently, a digital ad campaign, “Stop Your Wine-ing” by MillerCoors was released for “Two Hats,” a light beer with fruit infusions and 4.2% alcohol by volume that is supposed to wipe out wine. In the ad, a bowling ball rolls across a bar and wipes out a few bottles of white wine.

"We want to recruit this new generation of drinkers, who generally find current beer options to be outdated or expensive and build their preference for beer in the long term," says Sofia Colucci, senior director of innovation at MillerCoors.

With consumer preferences continuing to change in the wine and spirits industry, it will be interesting to see how wine companies respond to capitalize on this trend.