24 July, 2012

Barq's - "It's Good."

I picked up a 24-pack of Diet Barq's root beer the other day, and the first thing I noticed was the slogan above the logo: "It's Good."

Now, it may have been a while ago, but the last time I had bought Barq's, the tagline was "Barq's Has Bite!" which was a reference both to it's snappier flavor compared with other commercial root beers and it's caffeine content (not many root beers are caffeinated.) Long-time drinkers of Barq's have noticed that the flavor hasn't been quite the same since Coca-Cola acquired the brand and started tweaking the recipe (some people have complained that the "bite" seems to be a thing of the past) so I got all set to write a sarcastic blog post about Barq's lazy marketing department not being able to think of anything more clever to put on the label but "It's Good."

I always try to do at least a little research about things I'm going to write about so I don't come across as being completely stupid, and when I started to dig into Barq's long history I found out that the company was founded as Barq Brothers Bottling Company in 1890, started selling Barq's in 1898, and their original slogan was simply, "Drink Barq's. It's Good." Well shut my mouth wide open. The best I could do with that info was make a lame joke about how they dropped half their original slogan because people nowadays have half the attention span they used to. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Problem with Barq's is that you don't know if it's going to have caffeine until you drink it - it has multiple formulations. The safe bet is to drink Diet Barq's, which tastes crappy but at least is consistently caffeine free.