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Miller Lite

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Miller Lite was the first successful mainstream light beer in the United States market.[8] After its first inception as "Gablinger's Diet Beer", developed in 1967 by Joseph L. Owades, PhD, a biochemist working for New York's Rheingold Brewery,[9] the recipe was given by Owades to Chicago's Peter Hand Brewing.[10] That year, Peter Hand Brewing was purchased by a group of investors, renamed Meister Brau Brewing, and Lite was soon introduced as Meister Brau Lite, a companion to their flagship Meister Brau. Under the new management, Meister Brau Brewing encountered significant financial problems, and in 1972, sold several of its existing labels to Miller. The recipe was relaunched simply as "Lite" on packaging and in advertising (with "Lite Beer from Miller" being its "official" name until the late '90s) in the test markets of Springfield, Illinois; Providence, Rhode Island; Knoxville, Tennessee; and San Diego, California,[11] in 1973, and heavily marketed using masculine pro sports players and other, so-called, macho figures of the day in an effort to sell to the key beer-drinking male demographic. Miller Lite was introduced nationally in 1975.[12]

Miller's heavy-advertising approach worked where the two previous light beers had failed, and Miller's early production totals of 12.8 million barrels quickly increased to 24.2 million barrels by 1977 as Miller rose to 2nd place in the American brewing marketplace. Other brewers responded, in particular Anheuser-Busch with its heavily advertised Bud Light in 1982, which eventually overtook Lite in sales by 1994. Anheuser-Busch played on the branding style of "Lite" by highlighting the fact that their beer was called "Bud Light" as "everything else is just a light". In 1992, light beers became the biggest domestic beer in America, and in 1998, Miller relabeled its "Lite" brand as "Miller Lite".[13]

In 2008, Miller Brewing Company test-marketed three new recipes – an amber, a blonde ale, and a wheat – under the Miller Lite brand, marketed as Miller Lite Brewers Collection.[14]

In December 2013, as part of a product placement marketing campaign with the film Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, Miller reintroduced the 1974 navy-blue blackletter font "Lite" packaging on its 16-US-fluid-ounce (470 ml) cans for a limited time (the original 1972 cans used a light-blue script logo). However, the vintage packaging was such a success that by September 2014, the company decided to switch back to the vintage packaging full-time, including on bottles and tap handles, mirroring the unexpected success that PepsiCo had in 2009 with its Pepsi Throwback & Mountain Dew Throwback lines in tapping into the retro-themed packaging market. The unexpected sales increase, combined with wanting to differentiate the packaging from Bud Light, were factors in the decision, with some consumers even stating that Miller actually improved on the taste when nothing changed in the beer itself.[15][16]

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