Which beer do you prefer –

St.Pauli Girl

or Beck’s?

It seems only a short time ago branding was on every marketers lips as the silver bullet that would save every marketers butt. And it was a very sexy buzzword – nebulous enough to confuse upper management into thinking marketers were extremely smart people. Only some people truly understood branding and, of course, they stood at the top of the mountain making the big bucks.

But like other short-term business fads, branding sort of faded away from the top of conversations.

Without proclaiming any top-of-the-mountain expertise, I am proud to say I was and still am a branding fanatic. This was driven back home to me recently when I was digging through my office closet and I found an old keepsake – a bottle of beer.

Except this isn’t any old bottle of beer. I found this bottle a number of years ago when picking up a sixpack of St. Pauli Girl at the supermarket. When I got home I began stacking the bottles in my refrigerator and noticed something odd. There were six perfectly good bottles of St. Pauli Girl beer. Or were they Beck’s? Here’s a picture of one of those bottles:

Are they the same beers? I think so.

But I still prefer St. Pauli Girl.