U of M threatens to sue Bud Light makers for ‘trademark infringement’

The folks at Anheuser-Busch thought they had come up with the perfect back to college advertising campaign — pattern cans of Bud Light beer with school colors and market that dressed up beer near the school. But officials at the University of Michigan are not buying it, and according to the Wall Street Journal, have threatened a lawsuit over what it contends is trademark infringement.

The Fan Cans campaign comes amid efforts by Anheuser-Busch, a unit of Anheuser-Busch InBev NV of Leuven, Belgium, to revive the sales of Bud Light, the top-selling beer in the U.S. The brand’s U.S. volume sales are on track to register the first annual decline in its 27-year history.

As part of a broader marketing effort, the Bud Light school-colors campaign, also called “Team Pride” in the marketing materials, aims to use “color schemes to connect with fans of legal drinking age in fun ways in select markets across a variety of sports,” says Carol Clark, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president of corporate social responsibility. She also says that the program is voluntary and that roughly half the brand’s wholesalers have chosen to participate.

The company has created 27 new color combination. But 25 universities have protested the planned marketing scheme, with U of M saying it doesn’t want the beer in maize in blue sold anywhere in Michigan. Other universities, like the University of Colorado say they don’t want it sold near the school because of trademark infringement concerns as well as binge drinking concerns.

And how serious are concerns about binge drinking and other associated problems with tossing back some Buds?

Alcohol-related deaths among college students hit 1,825 in 2005, up from 1,440 in 1998, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The federal agency says 45% of college students report engaging in binge drinking, which is defined as five or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting. Nearly 600,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are injured annually because of alcohol, it says, and 97,000 are the victims of alcohol-related sexual assault.

Bud Light officials counter the industry has spent nearly $750 million since 1982 to address problem drinking, including underage and binge drinking.