Dethroning the King by Julie MacIntosh Page B

period. Valuing a brand is an art rather than a science, but it was Anheuser-Busch’s brands, not its brick-and-mortar breweries or bottling lines, that accounted for a huge chunk of the value of InBev’s $46.3 billion bid.
    Budweiser ranked as the 16th most valuable brand in the world in 2010, according to BrandFinance, which put Bud ahead of McDonald’s, Disney, and Apple. The value of the Budweiser brand in dollars? In May 2008, just before InBev made its bid, it was pegged at $17.2 billion, nearly 40 percent of the price of InBev’s offer.
    Gussie’s Clydesdales and whistle-stop train tours hinted at Anheuser-Busch’s eventual marketing prowess, but it was The Third who ultimately launched Budweiser’s image into the stratosphere.
    â€œBefore August became CEO, the marketing department was really kind of Animal House,” said one former executive, referring to the fraternity house environment depicted in the John Belushi movie. “It was fucking nuts.” August III harnessed that raw energy and directed it into ads that targeted the right types of consumers. He understood that advertising needed to be one of Anheuser-Busch’s most important products. It ultimately became even more critical to the company’s success, some would argue, than the beer itself. During his tenure, Anheuser-Busch was able to take the vice of drinking alcohol—which had been banned in America just a few decades earlier, and turn it into something that conjured up happy images and drew people together.
    The Third had no formal schooling in marketing, but it didn’t take a master’s degree to know who he needed to hunt—and how. With laser-like focus on its key consumers, the company consistently peddled two types of campaigns: “quality” ads that showed beer pouring out of a tap and Clydesdales tromping through powdery fields of snow; and the funny, irreverent ads aimed at younger drinkers.

    August’s big push into marketing started almost as soon as he hit the ground as CEO in the late seventies. Miller’s growth rate was topping Anheuser-Busch’s, Miller Lite was a smashing success, and the “Miller Time” ad campaign, which celebrated the camaraderie of blue-collar men, was a huge hit. John Murphy, Miller’s president, had a voodoo doll that he named August and kept a rug decorated with Anheuser’s “A&Eagle” logo under the desk in his office, where he would ceremoniously clean his shoes every morning. Miller’s top executives asserted that they’d soon be number one, which infuriated The Third. “I’ll never forget the look on his face,” William K. Coors, chairman of fellow rival Adolph Coors, told Business Week at the time. “He said, ‘Over my dead body.’ And he meant every word of it.”
    August III sensed that advertising was the missing ingredient he needed to beat Miller and to push Anheuser’s market share to 50 percent. When the Teamsters strike finally ended, he came on like a hurricane, firing staffers and making a critical move to install Mike Roarty as director of marketing. Roarty, an affable Irishman with a famously clever wit, was so instrumental during his 41 years at Anheuser-Busch that one of the three flags that often waved in front of the company’s headquarters was Ireland’s. “The American public doesn’t want to hear about Germany,” Roarty joked, slamming the Busch family’s ethnic heritage.
    Roarty was the comedic counterpoint to The Third’s “straight man”—the very public face of Anheuser-Busch during the late 1970s and 1980s. He and The Third both had healthy egos, but that’s where the similarities stopped. Roarty was a well-liked showman and creative genius who had a constant glint in his eye and was maddeningly late for meetings. “Michael is much more humorous than I am,” Busch said. “He’s a better