April 7, 2008 3:24PM

Check out What’s Brewing in St. Louis

By Alexis Glick

Last night I traveled to St. Louis, Missouri for this morning’s show. What a blast! This is my first time in St. Louis, and it’s a really pretty city. Great architecture and one of the most beautiful ballparks!!! I’m here because today is the anniversary of the repeal of prohibition. On April 7, 1933 President Roosevelt repealed prohibition, which started in 1920. To celebrate this day we flew down to the Headquarters of Anheuser-Busch. Today is also the anniversary of the clydsdale horses, which became the iconic symbol of the Budweiser brand when they first hitched a wagon full of beer and delivered them to the president to thank him.

This morning I talked to the executive team of Anheuser-Busch, including the VP’s or EVP’s of media, marketing, branding, brewing and creative development. Most of them have spent their entire career at Anheuser-Busch and grew up in St. Louis. The taxi cab driver who took me to the hotel last night told me that the vast majority of kids who grow up in St. Louis dream of working for Anheuser-Busch. I can now see why! The campus where the brewery, stables, visitor’s center and executive offices are located is so nice. It’s clean, crisp, historic, and represents the best of the midwest. It’s everything we love about living in this country. It’s the American Dream at work and everyone who lives here is incredibly proud of it’s heritage. It feels good being here!

First up I talked to Tony Ponturo. He is the vice president of Global Media and Sports Marketing. He is considered the No.1 most influential person in sports marketing, according to the Sports Business Journal and with good reason. Anheuser-Busch spends over $500 million a year on the advertising and marketing budget. That’s $500,000,000.00!!! Look at all of those zeros!!! Up to 70% of that is dedicated to the sports world. Budweiser sponsors the NFL (spends $100 million a year), has a new deal with the UFC (Mixed Martial Arts), has been a sponsor of Major League Baseball since 1996 sponsoring 26 MLB clubs. Not to mention sponsorships or partnerships with individual ballpark’s, the NHL, the World Cup and the upcoming Beijing Olympics. The list goes on and on. They are the No. 1 brand in sports and spend the most dollars on marketing, advertising and branding in sports…..far outpacing their competitors and the auto companies.

He has a sick job! He’s constantly flying from one venue to another. Analyzing and researching each sports market. Which sports speak to their target demo of 21 to 26 year old men. One of the reasons they invested in the UFC was because their research found the Mixed Martial Arts was the No. 2 sport behind the NFL for men between the ages of 21 and 26. He’s been to 26 consecutives Superbowl’s. Not bad :)!! The only other person that I have interviewed who comes close to that is Jim Kelly the former quarterback from the Buffalo Bills.

Take a look at the video. He talks about approach to the business and why he places big bucks in certain markets. One question that I didn’t get a chanceto ask him on air was about the success or failure of Bud.TV. About one year ago we both participated in the same panel at NCTA (National Cable & Telecommunications Association). It’s an annual conference where all of the heavy hitters in cable television, broadband and wireless appear to talk about their products and try to lure others to invest in them or subscribe to them. He gave a 20 minute speech about which sporting events and networks he invests in and why. He also talked about a push on the internet. At the time, he was very bullish about Bud.tv. Since then, his attitude has changed. The original content on their own site did not work out as well as he wanted. They found that users could get original content anywhere. As a result, they are now thinking about creating one megabrand on the internet where you can link out to the individual sites and brands. There will still be original content but in this case most of it will come from outcues that wouldn’t be appropriate for tv from people like Will Ferrel in the recent movie Semipro. He told me to look out for the new commercials for the Bud Lime brand. The new lime character is a “character.” You’ll have to wait. It’s a cool surprise!

I also caught up with David Peacock, EVP of marketing and a member of the board of directors and management committee. We met each other at the Superbowl when I interviewed him about the big money being spent on Superbowl advertising. It was there that we discussed coming down for the 75th anniversary. Ironically, it was that same day that Microsoft made th bid for Yahoo and rather amusing that today Yahoo said we’re not interested at this price point. Perhaps in our next meeting Yahoo will accept the deal :).

I asked him about the company’s growth strategy and here’s what he had to say: “Consumers, variety, their choices have changes, and I think what people want more is just different styles of beer and the craft beer brewers have done a good job bringing that to them, and we need to do the same thing. I’d like to get away from kind of micro big and small and say ‘we can produce anything that anyone else can’ we just need to provide more variety in our portfolio.”

Also to watch the video because he gives me a very special gift. You have to watch the video to see it. I was really touched

David is a native of St. Louis and his grandfather worked on the line for 5 years and his father worked in the brewery. He has three kids and I believe he will be running the company some day