New malt beverages yet to tap a market

You're hip to summer. Your white bikini is the must-have color of the season. Pumas carry you to the gym. You feed on Listerine strips.

Certainly, then, you're quaffing the coolest drinks of our time: the light, citrus-flavored malt beverages such as Smirnoff Ice, Skyy Blue, Bacardi Silver, Stoli Citrona and Captain Morgan Gold.

"Definitely not," declared Laura Davis, a 27-year-old New Yorker speaking from her office at Penguin Putnam Inc. "I don't know anyone here who drinks them, and if they did they would get laughed at."

Yet commercials promoting designer malt beverages as the newest, sexiest drink of summer are being pumped over airwaves nationwide. The food watchdogs known as the Center for Science in the Public Interest recently issued a report that television advertising for malt beverages may reach $450 million this year.

The aim of all the advertising, and all the money, is to inspire a trend among the lives and buying habits of twenty-somethings, a valued group. Not coincidentally, the liquor companies hope to create name recognition and customer loyalty for their hard-liquor brands. But results so far show that it's easier to imagine an overwhelming trend than to create one.

For those unaware of the fad -- and there seem to be plenty -- malt beverages are brewed in a fashion similar to beer. Overseas, they're also supercharged with more alcohol content. In the United States, however, malt beverages are simply a candied beer. This is important because beer, unlike distilled liquors, can be advertised on network television. And this is all about advertising:

Skyy Blue features women bronze as bullets, decked out in bathing suits (yes, white) and drinking from dark blue bottles that are essentially miniatures of those that carry Skyy vodka. They smile encouragingly into the camera.

For Bacardi Silver, a man, half-naked and with cheekbones like butterfly wings, shaves in a steamy bathroom. A Bacardi Silver sweats near the sink -- until a female hand reaches in and steals it away. He follows.

Smirnoff Ice promises adventure. Men who are rejected by a club bouncer instead sneak in through the restaurant kitchen, dressed as chefs. Waiting for them: Smirnoff Ice and a pack of babes, bronze as bullets.

CSPI -- up in arms over everything from bioethics to cheese pizza -- argues that liquor companies are selling a product attractive to young people, but with their own labels and in bottles that are miniature replicas of those that carry vodka or rum.

Through this little loophole, liquor brand names are flowing into households everywhere, mostly after 9 p.m., when millions of teenagers are watching.

In 2001, malt beverages captured about 2 1/2 percent of the beer market, according to the trade publication Beer Marketer's Insights. But the already-pervasive advertising campaigns are gearing up for a major and very costly push.

At a feisty recent news conference, CSPI's George Hacker announced: "Those products may be malt beverages but their message is liquor. With these drinks, the hard stuff beckons."

While CSPI frets for America's future, industry analysts question the survival of malt beverages. Some see them going the way of the wine cooler--the '80s sensation that made millions for Bartles & Jaymes, personified as likable old men thanking "you for your support," short-lived though it was.

"That's the debate," said Benj Steinman, editor of Beer Marketer's Insights. "Do (malt beverages) have more staying power than the wine cooler? The jury's out."

"Steinman added that while Smirnoff Ice has enjoyed considerable success, it is "beginning to see a ceiling. As other 'malternatives' come in, it's harder for Smirnoff to gain market share. Among other brands, none of them are doing as well as Smirnoff."

And supermarket sales for seven of the top 15 malt beverages are down 20 percent or more from a year ago, Steinman said. "Maybe it's not quite the revolution it was advertised to be."

This isn't surprising for those who remember when Coors cracked open the malt market with Zima in 1993. It was immediately branded a "chick drink" by many guys who weren't tough enough to choke it down themselves. Too bitter, they said.

Zima peaked its first year and has remained flat ever since. The flatness got flatter with the birth of better-tasting malt beverages, Steinman said. Coors has announced that it's getting back into the market. This translates to a new packaging scheme for Zima and partnering it with CBS's "Survivor 4" for a cash-and-prizes giveaway. Already, Coors has launched a second malt beverage called Vibe, a berry-flavored member of the fruity malt family.

Liquor companies refer to malt beverages as malternatives, an effort to lure drinkers who may dislike beer or hard liquor. CSPI calls them "Alcopops," to characterize the drinks as preying on youth. For some reason, no one calls it malt liquor, which, as Billy Dee Williams could tell you on billboards around the country, "WORKS EVERY TIME!"

Statistical evidence doesn't indicate a success inspiring adjectives such as "runaway" or "skyrocketing." Perhaps it's because of the lingering customer memory of overzealous consumption of wine coolers as a teen-ager; perhaps twenty-somethings are simply too hip to these ultra-cool television campaigns; perhaps most people are quite happy with beer, or better yet, the liquor version of all these new malt beverage brands.