Comments on: Blue beer – remarkable or wrong?

By: Silas Amos

Silas Amos — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:51:25 +0000

Chris, from what we can glean the beer is blue because seaweed is used as an ingredient – so one might assume that the colour is natural (although to an ill informed punter such as myself this sounds a bit fanciful). Your observation on the remarkable needing substance is a more rounded view of the point I was trying to make that idiosyncrasy is more effective if applied within certain conventions.

By: Chris Howell

Chris Howell — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:14:06 +0000

I guess what I’m missing from your post is whether the brand has built a story that beer is blue because of the ingredients/process (i.e. the water from iceburgs)or not (i.e. it’s just articially coloured)? If the former then it starts to fall into the ‘remarkable’ category becuase there is some substance behind the differentiation, but if not then it feels more like a ‘gimmick’ -merely superficial.
Too often I find Japanese food/drink new brands are incredibly remarkable which gains them great trial, but few of these launches seem to be sustainable over time…so for me, remarkability must be developed with some substance behind it and contribute to building the brand equity longer term.

By: Silas Amos

Silas Amos — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:59:37 +0000

Well that started a flurry of debate in our office! Our internal consensus: the Milka cow is blue/purple or purple/blue – lets call it lilac!

By: Seth Godin

Seth Godin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:05:39 +0000

It’s blue! Not purple, but still…