PBR Sells Out; Hipsters Responsible

I guess everything old is eventually new again. I remember when the statement Pabst made was that you were looking to get hammered for cheap (but maybe a step above "cheapest").

Perhaps of related interest, the Schlitz brand was snapped up a couple of years ago by a large distributor in the area, where one of the younger generation of the family business intended to relaunch -- returning to the circa 1930's recipe -- as a premium craft brew.

There appears to be a significant lingering value being assigned to these brands, regardless of their intervening depreciation.

I wonder just how sticky is the presence of such public brands. And whether there is a common interval between their degradation and renewal; some timeframe short enough that they remain in the memory of a younger generation, but long enough that the accumulated or final negative connotations have been lost or don't carry significance with them.

In the tech world, IBM seemed to go through something somewhat similar with regard to brand when it sort of embraced open source (which surge in brand value we seem to be moving beyond). And HP has worked to unbury itself from its "Compaqification". Mentioning these is a stretch in terms of comparison, but the industry is young enough that the long term role of brands seems something of an open question.