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The Corporate Embodiment of Canadian Culture
As ‘‘North America’s oldest brewery,’’ Molson’s association with Canadian culture dates back to the early administration of the colonial nation-state and the broadcasting of Canadian culture. Indeed, at the outset of his arrival in Montreal in 1782 from Britain, the brewery’s founder, John Molson, set himself apart from the colony’s principal fur trade institutions, the Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company. With a sound knowledge of farming techniques and grains, Molson quickly noted the absence of local breweries in the Montreal area, due in large part to the French inhabitants’ preference for wine. The Molson dynasty was henceforth built on the separation of French and English consumer markets, an ironic beginning, given the ongoing separist sentiments in the Canadian federation (Woods 1983, 11). Always mindful of the political tensions between the Montreal’s Anglo- phone business community and the French population, Molson nevertheless played a leading role in debates over the state of transportation in the territory. Recognizing the limits of sailing ships on the St. Lawrence River, the principal trade route between Montreal, Quebec City, and Europe, Molson set out to monopolize steam-powered shipping between the territory’s main settlements. By 1811, however, Molson had failed to acquire such rights from Upper Canada’s legislature (Woods 1983, 32–45).
Almost 150 years later, Molson again became a key player in nation-binding technologies. Responding to the corporate requirements for public relations and mass marketing Molson hired the Montreal Canadiens’ hockey superstar Jean Beliveau in 1952 as a public relations representative. Beliveau’s tenure was the beginning of a longstanding relationship between Molson’s and hockey, Canada’s unofficial national sport. Indeed, some five years later, in 1957, seeking a greater presence in Canadian culture, Molson bought the Montreal Canadiens and later used its new asset to procure the cosponsorship (with Imperial Oil) of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s nationwide telecast of Hockey Night in Canada, one of the nation’s oldest broadcasts (Woods 1983, 297–299).With the rise of free trade in the late 1980s, both interprovincially and internationally with the United States, Molson’s protected market share and status as a Canadian institution was facing increased pressure from local cottage breweries, American breweries, and its chief Canadian rival, Labatt Brewing Company, owner of the Toronto Blue Jays, back-to-back baseball World Series winners. The competition became so intense that the introduction of ‘‘ice beer’’ into Canada in 1993 triggered an onslaught of legal battles between Molson and Labatt over both the rights to the label and the authenticity of the so-called ice-filtered brewing process. On similar grounds, legal wrangling later followed the introduction of ‘‘Molson Ice’’ into the American market, when Molson allied with the American conglomerate Philip Morris Companies and its subsidiary Miller Brewing Company. Even Australia’s Carlton & United Breweries—which controls half of Molson Canada—suffered a similar fate when challenged by rival Australian Tooheys Brewing Co., which itself had introduced Hahn Ice (Martin 1993). This initial corporate posturing was therefore predicated not only on the ownership of the ice-filtered brewing process but also on its relationship with the space, weather, and nation of Canada (Berland 1993).
Within a year of releasing Molson Ice in the United States, a phalanx of ice beers flooded the market and by the middle of 1994 reached 5 percent of the U.S. beer market. Unlike the concept of dry beer, which was imported from Japan, an American advertising trade magazine noted with a degree of nationalist consternation that ‘‘now that dry beers have gone flat, let’s look north, to Canada’’ (‘‘Dry Ice’’ 1994, 20). And in so doing, Anheuser-Busch introduced Ice Draft, Miller released Lite Ice, Icehouse, Miller Ice, and Miller High Life Ice, while Coors promoted its own Arctic Ice. With the exception of Miller’s Lite Ice and Anheuser-Busch’s Ice Draft, ice beers had a high alcohol content, so much so that in February 1994 the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms confirmed that it was investigating ‘‘the possibility [that] brewers. . . or their distributors [were] illegally using alcohol strength claims in marketing ice beers’’ (‘‘Temperatures Rising on Ice Beer Ads’’ 1994, 2). Even Miller Lite was advertised by the Chicago advertising firm Leo Burnett within a ‘‘break-the-rules’’ theme.Accompanying the phalanx of ice beers, Coors Lite was likewise promoted with images of snow-covered wilderness. During breaks in sports programming, television commercials thus played a hummable jingle (‘‘Tap the Rockies . . . Coors Lite’’) as a group of giant twenty- and thirty-year-old men and women played football, dwarfing their ice-capped wilderness environment. At the ad’s conclusion, a giant young woman dwarfed a snow topped ridge and slammed down a beer tap into the mountain range, hence ‘‘Tapping the Rockies.’’ The sounds and images of the Coors Lite commercial are thus quite decipherable: the wintry, rugged environment is a playground for the young; it is challenging yet refreshing, particularly when enhanced by an authentic refreshment from its icy, natural essence. Furthermore, the participants by their very size attempt to conquer the wilderness through ritualistic though rigorous play. Viewers we are thus taken to the imaginary realm of the extreme.
Another iceless beer, Bud Lite, enters the ice phenomena with even greater significance for Canadian culture. As an official sponsor of the National Hockey League (NHL) in the United States, a sporting institution with historical roots on the ice rinks of Canada, Bud Lite becomes ice itself. Its logo is inscribed in paint under- neath NHL ice rinks across the United States in plain view of the players, fans, and television viewing audience. Bud Lite therefore physically becomes part of the rituals of a sport’s culture; it provides the grounding for the display of the sport’s speed, power, and violence.
