Brand worth more than the beer

I don't know if they've actually been selling much beer.  Does anyone drink Dixie? It's basically just a worse and more expensive Budweiser.  And why bother with any of that when there is plenty of Miller Lite to be had?  Anyway now that they're retiring the one thing that gets them any attention, they're going to squeeze as much cash out of it as they can. 

Sales of T-shirts, baseball caps, glasses, tin signs, dog bandannas and everything else emblazoned with the Dixie Beer logo spiked over the weekend, after owner Gayle Benson announced that the brew would be rebranded.

“There were people walking out with shopping bags full,” said Jim Birch, general manager of the souvenir shop at the New Orleans East brewery.

After that they're selling Not-Dixie. Which is what any of several local microbreweries is doing already.  So how sustainable is that?

 

Self made tyrants

From the Advocate's obit of Blaine Kern this morning.

What Popeyes kingpin Al Copeland was to chicken, Kern was to Carnival: a brash, shameless character who came from nothing, launched an unconventional Big Easy empire, and lived unapologetically large and loud as a result.

Ah yes the myth of the "self-made" man. 

Carnival was traditionally the province of the city's Uptown elite. Kern, of German and Italian descent, had been born on the wrong side of the Mississippi River. But his artistic and sales skills afforded him access to Carnival's inner circle. Once there, he aimed to make a difference.

"When I started out, if you were Jewish, black, Irish, Italian, you couldn’t get in these clubs,” he said in 2018. “You had to be a WASP. It was crazy. It was a different world.”

"Once there, he aimed to make a difference."  Did he really, though?  Or was he just in the right place to be useful to an expanding class of business elites at just the right time and make a lot of money in the process?  The Carnival club hierarchy may be more complex, diverse, even, than it once was, but its royalty, so to speak, is still very much a manifestation of wealth and status. Kern may have "come from nothing" but it was only so he and his heirs could arrive in the company of the same owners, bosses, and real estate speculators who profit from the very poverty from which Kern was fortunate enough to emerge. What is the good in that? What difference is made?

It's interesting how often figures like Copeland and Kern, having grown up among poverty and racial exclusion, resolve not to take down these systems of oppression but instead to weasel their way into the oppressing class. 

Tom Benson was another example. There's also some news today about one of his several late in life local brand rescue projects.  

New Orleans has been hoisting Dixie beer for more than a century. Soon, that beer and the company behind it will have a new name.

In a statement released today, Gayle Benson, owner of Dixie Brewery and the city’s Saints and Pelicans franchises said her company will change the Dixie name. The new name for Dixie has not yet been decided, but it will be chosen with feedback from the local community, Benson said.

Poor Gayle. Saddled with this nostalgia product that she now has to reinvent.  Guess the new beer will have to be a "self-made" brand.

Benson's branding bucket list

Tom Benson is bringing Dixie beer back to New Orleans because there clearly aren't enough breweries in town now. 

Tom and his wife Gayle Benson said Wednesday (July 26) that they purchased a majority of Dixie Brewing Co. LLC for an undisclosed price. Longtime owners Joseph and Kendra Bruno will keep a minority interest. As part of the agreement, a brewery will be built in Orleans Parish within the next two years, possibly in New Orleans East.

The Brunos bought Dixie in 1985 which happens to be the same year that Benson bought the Saints.  Maybe that's only interesting to me.  Anyway it's just kind of funny that Tom thinks he's stimulating the economy by bringing back manufacturing jobs.   

"Here's something that represents New Orleans for me," Tom Benson said Wednesday. "I think this is a good thing for New Orleans. This is why I wanted to get involved. I believe we need a little stimulus here in our city. We need something that's made here."

Sort of reminds you of Trump's Carrier stunt.. or at least Michael Bagneris and his "Nuts and Bolts" or whatever.  Either way, it's clear Benson is on his own personal locavore's version of a #MAGA journey.

The Dixie deal didn't come easily. About two years ago, Benson asked his team to look into buying New Orleans brands in the "ain't dere no more" category, iconic companies that were struggling or dead, his executives said. 

Saints President Dennis Lauscha said they had exploratory talks with at least 10 companies. "We all said that the one we all would love to bring back was Dixie Beer," Lauscha said. "Word on the street, though, was the owners weren't very interested in selling Dixie Beer ... We knew we had to convince them that this was the right thing to do, that we were the suitor that was going to bring it into the next generation."

So in the coming sunset years of Tom's life we can expect to see him present us with more undead brands. People had some fun with this on Twitter yesterday. "Tom Benson's Hubig's Pies" "Tom Saver" 'Tom's Ruth's Chris" "K&B&B" "Tom's Tastee Donuts" "TomBenzie's" and on and on. He's already managed to make Tom's Tulane Stadium happen. So, really, anything is possible.