Craft Brewers Use Creative Marketing to Compete with Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis

If you head south in St. Louis, down Interstate 55 and just a nip and tuck from the neighborhood of Soulard, you'll see a whole town's worth of red colored brick, some of it about nine stories high. If you exit at Arsenal Street and head towards Broadway, the small city that is Anheuser-Busch Brewery surrounds you like the Grand Canyon. As you drive by, you can smell the malt and see the steam coming out of the huge pipes that transverse some of the buildings. If you stay on the highway, you'll see the giant Clydesdales that cross the front of the entire building like some giant chariot beer-wagon. It's a nice looking building from the outside and the inside is a technical marvel; a world-class brewery that is second to none. The family of the last of the St. Louis German Beer Barons of the late 1800's runs it. If you listen closely as you pass by the Clydesdales picture, you can almost hear that familiar song:

Here comes the King, here comes the Big Number One
Budweiser Beer is Beer that's second to none
The King is calling, so loud and clear
There's only one Budweiser Beer.

Anheuser-Busch in a way, IS St. Louis. It's one of the major employers in the area. If you go anywhere in the world and mention Budweiser, most of the people you talk to will know it's from St. Louis. The world's biggest beer company also has a lock on St. Louis. Many of the town's bars and restaurants only carry AB products. They have squeezed out most of their competition from the major events around the city. This issue came up at the St. Louis Art Fair last summer and the upcoming Mardi Gras in February. Just try to go to a Cardinal's baseball game and try to order anything other than a Bud or Bud Light.