Want A Beer At Applebee's Buy The Small Size. Here's Why

Somebody posted a video that shows how restaurants use different shaped glasses to make us think we're getting a lot more to drink in large sizes than small.

At Applebee's the people in the video ordered a small beer and a large beer. They drank the small beer. Then they poured the contents of the large beer into the smaller glass. When the small glass was full, there was barely anything at all in the large glass.

I'm guessing a lot of other restaurants do this, too. Watch and see for yourself:

Is Big Beer Making It Harder For You To Get The Better Craft Beers?

Makers of Add caption

I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys beers like Budweiser, Natural Light or Miller Light.

I think the stuff is terrible, but that's my snobby opinion. Still, I like to keep trying craft beers.

It seems like a new craft beer appears on the market every second. Which is a good thing.

However, Big Beer, the giant companies like Anhauser-Busch/InBev (AB InBev) that make Budweiser and similar products, are probably going to make it harder for you to get the craft beers you love.

Not impossible, mind you, but harder.

According to Mother Jones, via the Wall Street Journal, independent craft beers make up 11 percent or so of the market, and that share is growing. Big Beer is NOT happy about that, because they're losing market share.

To combat this, Big Beer is offering incentives to local distributers who stock the shelves at your local supermarket and corner store  to basically keep craft beers off the shelves.

Says the Wall Street Journal: "Distributers whose sales volume are 95 percent made up of AB/InBev brands would be eligible to have the brewer cover as much as half of there contractual marketing support for those brands, which includes retail promotion and display costs. AB InBev, which introduced the plan at a meeting of distributors in St. Louis, estimates participating distributors would receive an average annual benefit of $200,000 each."

That's a chunk of change, and that's why you often see a tiny area of store shelves devoted to craft beers, while you get aisles and aisles of Budweiser and Natural Light.

The AB InBev incentive program would also limit shelf space to craft brewers who produce less than 15,000 barrels or sell beer in only one state.

That's because Big Beer is scared of the competition by relative large craft brewers like Sierra Nevada or Long Trail.

The incentive program for brewers is voluntary, so it sounds like it avoids violating anti trust laws. But the incentive is so sweet that few distributors would likely blow it off, says the Wall Street Journal.

Makers of beers like Budweiser want to make it harder
to buy craft beers, like 14th Star Brewing Co. products
in Vermont, but don't worry, you'll still be able to get
them and not have to swill Natural Light. 

The incentive program says a lot about the makers of brews like Budweiser and such.

They perhaps don't have the quality to compete with craft brewers so they use their financial might to try to crowd the craft brews out of the market.

This is a First World problem, of course. Nobody is going to die because it's a little harder for the public to buy craft beer.  But it is an interesting comment on American big business practices: Use existing clout and finances to stifle competition.

It won't be impossible to buy craft beer, of course. There are so many brew pubs and such around the nation springing up that have great beers. You can go directly to these breweries and buy whichever craft beer you like best.

For instance, in my town of St. Albans, Vermont, I can just go down to the excellent 14th Star Brewing Co. and pick up a growler of their finest. No need to settle for Natural Light (ugh!) that's for sure.

And as for all that Budweiser filling an entire aisle at the local supermarket: I appreciate your efforts, Anheiser-Busch, but I think I'll pass.

Yes, Web Sites Need To Make Money But Stop With The Horrible Ads Already

Does on-line advertising make you want to do this?  

For another blog post, I was going to link to an article in the Arizona Republic newspaper

But I couldn't justify putting you, my dear readers, through all the hoops to read the article in question.  Let's just say I fail at Guantanamo style torture.

To see the Arizona Republic article, you first had to answer three survey questions about cars.

Then, the article would open up, but you immediately get an obnoxious autoplay ad. Then before you have a chance to finish reading the article, a pop up comes on, urging you on to another piece of work by the Arizona Republic.

Before you say that I'm expecting something for nothing, a free lunch, I think there SHOULD be advertising, or some sort of fee structure to pay to see articles.  See, I'm not a mooch.

The reporters at the Arizona Republic and pretty much every other online publication deserve to be paid a fair wage. The businesses they work for should have the opportunity to make a profit. If I benefit from reading an article some hard working journalist wrote, then I should pay for it.

Really, though. Publications have got to find a better way to make money. I know that's easier said than done, but what most of 'em are doing now ain't working.

Now, if I want to read a certain publication frequently, I could just subscribe. Just like buying magazines at a newsstand. But instead, I would just pay online for X dollars a month or whatever. No problem.

Like most people, though, I want to read a particular online sites only occasionally,  if I see they have a particularly interesting article.

A lot of them ask me to fill out a survey first. Like, are you going to buy a car this year? What kind? My paranoia goes skyward when I see these. Big Data will follow me, pestering me to buy a car. And it will just add to what I'm sure is an already immense marketing dossiere every ad agency has on me. And everybody else.

Everybody also hates auto play. If you want to attract eyeballs, annoying people is not the way to do it. I've asked this question over and over,  and never gotten an answer. The question is: How is it that advertisers think that if they annoy us, we will buy that product? I run to the hills instead.

Speaking of extreme irritation, how about those banner ads that follow you as you scroll through a web page?

With that thought, Surprise!!! Ad blockers are getting more and more popular.

Google, in its Chrome browser,  is starting to block ads that use Adobe's Flash. Apple is going to have software for iPhones and IPads that will let us install apps that block ads from popping up on their Safari browser.

People like me who whine about ads, and there are many of us, have a dirty little secret. We actually like ads. But only good, clever, interesting ads.

So why don't advertisers make more of these?  There certainly are creative people out there who can do this. When an ad appears that grabs me, I sit through it without clickiing on "skip" or just exiting out of the web site.

This seems to be a simple solution - just make compelling ads.

Retailers Already Planning To Be Basically Open All Day Thanksgiving For Your Shopping Pleasure

Looking way ahead to Thanksgiving, this
is what we have to look forward to.  

It's the end of September, which means if you haven't gotten SUPER Excited about Christmas shopping yet, you're way too late, at least in the minds of our fine nation's retailers.

And if you're already waiting anxiously for the big Black Friday sales stampede the day after Thanksgiving take note: Black Friday has now been rescheduled to Thanksgiving Day.

Throw away that turkey and march off to the mall like everyone else! Even more so than last year.

The Wall Street Journal reports that retailers plan to open even earlier on Thanksgiving than last year, or stay open all day.

And, they'll start hammering us with Christmas sale ads earlier, too, like any day now.

All this is because retailers want to punish us for not buying enough of their crappy products so far this year.

Revenue isn't so great, so they want to hammer us on Thanksgiving.

Says the Wall Street Journal:

"Retailers are struggling to boost sales, and the bottom line. Most consumers in the middle see little, if any, wage growth. The back to school selling season is shaping up to be the worst since 2009, says Craig Johnson the president of the consulting firm Custom Growth Partners."

The Journal also says holiday sales are forecast to rise about 3.5 percent over last year. Not enough to keep retailers happy. Clearly, we're not spending our nonexistent money to do our duty and keep these lousy stores, and their corporate parents, awash in cash like apparently we're supposed to.

So, they'll punish us by demanding we abandon our families and our dinners to go shopping. Worse, they're punishing their low wage employees by making them work on Thanksgiving. That, while the upper management, marketers, etc who decided to open stores on Thanksgiving surely sit down for a leisurely turkey dinner on the holiday.

I also think, as do many observers, including some quoted in the Wall Street Journal, that if retailers have everybody shop on Thanksgiving, they won't go out in December. So they won't get ahead.

But I'm sure these store chains will be happy to ruin Thanksgiving as much as they ruin an otherwise nice Christmas season.

Then again, there's a lot of people out there who LOVE to shop, no matter what. Friends. family?  Go away!! There's a Big Sale at Walmart!!!

Sigh.

School Let Out For the Summer A Minute Ago, So It's Time For Back To School Sales!!

Last weekend, high schools in my area held their graduation ceremonies and the kiddies in all grades are now enjoying their first full week of summer vacation.  

Kids just got out of school for the summer.
Time for back to school sales!  

Which, in the world of retail logic, means their parents must drag the kids off THIS INSTANT!! for back to school sales.

Yep, they're on, according to Consumerist. Retailers always seem to start their sales seasons earlier, and earlier. You can probably pick up Christmas items now. Or at least soon.

But you'd better hurry, because I'm sure the Christmas season clearance sale will start in August or something.

All this advanced season stuff means you can't actually buy the stuff you need when you need it.  In retail land, and retail land only,  it doesn't make sense to sell t-shirts and shorts in June, bug spray in July, or swim suits at the beginning of August.

We're only supposed to buy things we won't need for many months yet. Maybe they hope we'll lose what we bought, and have to buy it again?

That's one way to maximize profits, I guess.

The retailers indeed say seasonal creep, be it Christmas or back to school is good for them and somehow good for parents. 

"Some schools start back up as early as the third week in August, so it's not really early," said National Retail Federation spokeswoman Kathy Grannis last year in the Tampa Tribune.

What, it takes two months to stock up on school supplies so you have to start now?

Then again, some people apparently live to shop and need an excuse to do that. "While 47.8 percent of parents will start back to school shopping one month before the school year starts, a full 22 percent will start two months out."

Because shopping for your kids in icy, air conditioned, sterile malls is apparently more fun than playing with your kids in the summer sun.

Gotta go. I need to shop for a new pair of shorts for summer. Oh, wait. Summer officially starts in a few days. I can't buy shorts. I'm way too late. Summer clothes are so February. I guess I'll have to shop for a ski parka instead.

Big Brother Is A Marketer: Creepy Junk Mail Goes To A Dad, And His Deceased Daughter

One of the most disconcerting things about marketers, and using the Internet, and social media and everything else on line and in technology is the stuff these marketers know about you,

A mourning father, and the junk mail
addressed to him and his late daughter. Icky.  

They know everything about you. Stuff that you don't know they know about you. Stuff you might not know about yourself.

Recently, an extremely creepy window of what marketers know really freaked out and angered an Illinois dad.

Junk mail from OfficeMax was addressed to Mike Seay and his daughter who was killed in a car crash a year or so ago.

Now, people often get junk mail addressed to somebody who has passed away. They're on a mailing list or a database, and the people who run the database might not have any way of knowing the person has died.

Fine.

But, according to the Los Angeles Times, this is way creepy.  Because the junk mail was addressed, and I'm directly quoting here, "Mike Seay, Daughter Killed in Car Crash."

Seay said he is only an occasional customer of OfficeMax and would never have told anyone there such personal details of his daughter dying, and how she passed away.

OfficeMax says it gets its mailing list from a third party provider. But that third party provider seems to know a lot about Seay and his personal life. Which means that provider, and so many other marketers, know all the details of our lives, too.

In this case, it looks to me like some computers figured out the circumstances of Seay's daugther's death, and some idiot just put in a note, never intending for it to get out. But it did.

Just how the marketer found out about the death, and how it happened, is unknown to us. They're not talking. But it feels invasive to say the least, no?

I know it's just for marketing purposes, and I don't mind strangers knowing things about me, but I'd like to be the one to choose what is known about me and what isn't.

I also know that ship has sailed, and people, marketers know much about me and a lot of other people.

Another problem is some of this "knowledge" about us is incorrect. The algorithms that computers use also allow the programs, and/or people to make incorrect assumptions about us. Or there's just wrong information about us that gets thrown into the data.

Garbage in, garbage out.

A small example: The other day I blogged about a crazy Ukranian guy who hangs off of buildngs by his fingertips for fun and jollies. Suddenly, I got spam alleging that Ukranian girls were interested in meeting me and I should go to their website to find them.

Since I looked up something referencing the Ukraine, the advertisers guessed I might be interested in picking up Hot Ukrainian Women. (For the record, dear marketers who are surely reading this, I have no interest in Ukranian women)

But it gets more serious than my sad lack of a relationship with Ukranian women.  According to the L.A. Times:

"Retail giant Target reportedly knows how to use its data to identify pregnant customers, and it recently lost tens of millions of customers credit and debit card information to hackers, among other data. Gatherings of consumer data are also reportedly sellling off lists of rape victims and AIDS and HIV patients, a privacy group told Congress in December."

I routinely look up all kinds of strange things, either as fodder for my blog and other writings, or just goofy curiosity. Will this come back to haunt me. Will banks say I'm too big a risk somehow because I'm looking up financial problems that aren't my own?

My elderly father has a serious heart problem and I looked up treatment options for him. I know I can't be left uninsured for pre-existing conditions, but will insurers somehow screw me over because they think I'm the one with the heart problem, and not my dad?

I'm contemplating a blog post on police brutality and have looked up some items on that subject. Will police get ahold of this data and perhaps take action.

That's a very paranoid thought, I realize, and I doubt any police agency will look at me askance for looking up instances of police brutality.

But if criminals can steal identities through big data breaches like the one Target experienced, can more sophisticated criminals put together a data-based dossier on me or anybody else and assume my identity, or yours?

Could they then commit further crimes in your name? And get you in trouble?

The ways that data can be mined is dizzying. Many cars come equipped with GPS. People can track where you've been in your car. 

So, if I was going down the wrong street, realized it, and turned around in drug treatment center parking lot so I can get back on the road to my intended destination, where the Internet brand me as a drug addict.

I'd hate to go through life being super careful about what I look up, where I go, what I see, because it'll go on my (incorrect) permanent record.

I'm still in the realm of being paranoid here. But will this paranoia become reality some day?

People have long worried about Big Brother watching you. They were thinking about the government. Which is a possibility. But a bigger threat seems to be that Big Brother is a marketer. Or worse, a criminal.

I think I want new relatives.

It's December 19 Already! Why Aren't You Stocking Up For Easter Yet?!

It's six days before Christmas.

Time to stock up on Easter
goods NOW!!  

Most sane people are still probably finishing up their Christmas shopping, but according to America's marketing and retail geniuses, you're, way, way, WAY behind schedule.

You should be stocking up for Easter, pronto!

My gawd! Easter falls on April 20 in 2014. Time is running short!

You're late, late LATE in getting all your Easter treats. Get your Easter bunnies, Easter chocolates, Easter EVERYTHING before they run out.

Do it NOW!!!

Granted, the Consumerist post I link to showing Easter goods at a Krogers in December is from 2011, but somewhere, some evil retail chief is stocking shelves with Easter goods now.

Because if you don't buy all your Easter stuff before Christmas arrives, you're really, really worthless.