Two of America’s biggest beer sellers look to be involved in another trademark and marketing squabble. It’s Yuengling vs. Anheuser Busch … Round 3!
On Tuesday, the country’s biggest beer seller, Anheuser-Busch, unveiled a new logo and “visual identity”.
After it did, America’s oldest brewer, Pottsville-based DG Yuengling & Son, noticed something about it looked, shall we say, familiar.
It’s the second time in the last month that Yuengling has accused Anheuser-Busch, makers of the Budweiser brand of beers, of basically imitating its look.
Anheuser-Busch has yet to respond to this latest informal accusation.
Yuengling Says New Anheuser-Busch Logo Looks Really Familiar
Here’s a look at the new Anheuser-Busch logo:
And here’s a side-by-side comparison Yuengling put together for a Wednesday tweet, calling out the new logo as looking a tad familiar:
The Pottsville company cheekily tweeted: “Cool new Eagle. We’re flattered. Yuengling, America’s Oldest Brewery, established 1829.”
When you look at the logos side-by-side, you can certainly see the similarities.
And when you look at A-B’s old logo, you can see what the company did to achieve its “new” look. It basically kept the A but flipped the eagle so it’s looking to the right, not the left, and covered it in gold.
The company says the gold “mirrors the golden hue of beer and barley” and the eagle is now facing to the right and “firmly in flight” because it’s “boldly gazing into the future.”
Yuengling, of course, has a logo featuring an eagle and it’s facing right and also gold colored. The neck on Anheuser-Busch’s eagle looks more bent than Yuengling’s eagle.
Regardless, the similarities in the classic Yuengling logo and Anheuser-Busch’s new logo are pretty striking.
But what’s even more bizarre about this story is that it’s nearly a full repeat of a story several months ago.
Round 1: The Fight Over Seltzer City
This week’s jab from Yuengling is just the latest in an ongoing marketing feud between the Pottsville company and Anheuser-Busch.
The first shot fired in this fight happened back in 2019. That’s when A-B was debuting its Bud Light Seltzer product and of all places, picked Seltzer, PA (the village in Norwegian Township just over the Pottsville city boundary) as its fictitious headquarters.
There was a whole marketing campaign based around Seltzer, PA, including a series of commercials shot in a town the beer maker had you believe was Seltzer but clearly wasn’t Seltzer (or Seltzer City, as it’s known to many locals).
That move irked Yuengling a bit, which responded with a “Not In My Back Yard” volley.
Round 2: Bud Light and Flight
The second round of this ongoing battle happened just this past December.
Yuengling says A-B tweeted through the Bud Light brand to its followers that they should “get ready for the next generation of beer.” But Yuengling said, hmmm, that sounds a lot like our tagline for the new Flight brand. Yuengling has a trademark on that tagline as the “next generation of light beer.”
After making its thoughts known on the obvious similarity between the Yuengling tagline and the new Bud Light line, Yuengling says Anheuser-Busch wiped the internet of it using that phrase.
And now this week comes the latest skirmish in this battle. So far, no legal action has been taken in either instance.
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