Jul 13th, 2008
Red, White & Brewed: Working and Drinking the New World Order
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As a red-blooded American living in a red-blooded state (South Carolina), I just read with alarm that an international conglomerate is attempting to take over Anheuser-Busch. Despite the German name, A-B is the red-blooded American brewer behind that most red-blooded of beers, Budweiser. The predator in this horror story is the international alcohol conglomerate InBev, which is based in Belgium and run by Brazilians…
Wait, Belgium and Brazil? Sounds like a great genetic mix for an American supermodel — I would love to see that — but not for an American beer!
What makes the prospect even more discombobulating is that Bud is the last of the pure-American giant brewers. Miller is owned by SAB (South African Breweries), and Coors, the flagship brew of my red-blooded favorite state of Colorado, is now part Canadian (i.e., Molson-Coors). 
How did Coors go from supporting the John Birch Society to teaming up with those lefty polar bear huggers? It’s a mystery to me — call in Scully and Molder to investigate this one. What’s that? The new X-Files movie was filmed in Canada?! Nooooooo!
Now, rumor has it that if InBev takes over Anheuser-Busch, they’re replacing Bud’s red-white-and-blue label with the U.N. flag colours… Wait, did I just spell “colors” with a “u”? See, the identity transformation is happening to me, too, straight out of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”!
OK, I’m just being silly here. In fact, I have to confess that I’m one of… Them. The internationalists, I mean. And it’s making perfect business sense.
I’m a member of an international team of web-development professionals called the SEO Workers. The four of us operate out of our respective cities: Augsburg, Germany; Sundern, Germany; Ipswich, UK; and me in Greenville, SC. We’ll soon be joined by my buddy from Los Angeles, CA, who has connections in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Denmark. Our clients come from Germany, the U.S. and Australia. And even with all that, we feel like we’re too geographically limited, particularly with all the investments coming out of Dubai and Abu Dhabi these days (they’re using all that oil money to buy everything from Hollywood films to a chunk of the Chrysler Building).
As I mentioned, going international makes perfect business sense, particularly for us web developers. Why? Well, obviously, the internet is international. How international? Consider YouTube, which gets 74% of its traffic from outside the U.S. How about Budweiser.com? That gets 49% of its traffic from outside the U.S. Even USAToday.com gets 20% of its visitors from abroad. (Source: Alexa)
So if you’re designing a major website these days — or even a minor one — you need to consider the fact that a large portion of your traffic will come from foreign sources. That means your site should be search-engine optimized for Google in other countries. That means your site should be written with an international reader in mind: for example, the sentence, “Yo, bud, wanna have a bit of my Bud after you smoke that bud?” might not make much sense to that prospective buyer from Brussels. That means your site should avoid technology and plug-ins not widely used in other countries (one of my pet peeves is QuickTime).
Like it or not, the globalization of business keeps going and evolving. It has evolved from companies of different nationalities trading with each other, to companies of different nationalities working with each other, to companies of different nationalities merging with each other.
Of course, if the InBev takeover happens, it will still take me, the internationalist, a long time to get used to the fact that Budweiser will no longer be truly and purely American. In fact, I may just have to start drinking Sam Adams, brewed by the Boston Beer Co. And those guys wouldn’t dare sell a beer named after an American patriot to a foreign conglomerate… would they?!
It’s an international world - at least in business now.
I owned a toystore and had a section for “Made in America” products and I spent more time looking for stuff I could stock there than any other section in the store.
Almost impossible to find. What could be found tended to be brand new business that hadn’t hit their success bubble yet to make them of interest to bigger companies. The international ocean of big fish gobbles up the little nationalized businesses if they want to succeed for very long.
Tho it’s a fact of commerce life, it is still disconcerting to adapt to the changing identities of our beloved longtime products.
Do you think there will be specialty Bud bottles wearing Brazilian bikinis? One can only hope
Dougy, this is so well said- you’re a great writer, I can’t wait to read what you’ll be saying in the New York Times some day-
Yeah, I’m right there with you, buddy. I was surprised when I saw this on the news even here in Japan. Next thing you know, Corona will be sold to the Russians and relabeled as Балтика (Baltika).
On a more serious note, you’re completely right as far as your tone on internationalization and the effects of globalization. I say let GM fail, too.
Personally, I’ve always been a Guinness fan. Guess that makes me international before international was hip.
Fun read. Oh, say hi to our friend in L.A. for me.
Bethany
Are they serious? oh well.
[...] makes the prospect even more discombobulating is that Bud is the last of the pure-American giant brewers. Miller is owned by SAB (South African Breweries), and Coors, the flagship brew of my red-blooded [...]
[...] But what does all this have to do with web development? [...]