‘The Simpsons’ Duff Beer Tries to Tap Markets Outside Springfield

Inspired by animated brand, new brew hits shelves in Chile; ‘caramel aromatic’

When Homer Simpson stood up and delivered his famous toast to alcohol as “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems,” there’s no question what was in his stein: Duff Beer.

The fictional brew is such an integral part of the “The Simpsons” that its caped and pelvic-thrusting mascot, Duffman (“Duffman is here to refill your beer!”) has his own fan blog and winding story line. In the show, the beer even has its own theme park, Duff Gardens.

For decades, real beer sellers from Australia to Germany to Colombia have been trying to capitalize on all this fake marketing by putting real versions of Duff Beer into the market—only to be shut down after hearing from lawyers for “Simpsons” owner 21st Century Fox.

But this week, the media giant is entering the Duff Beer business itself—beginning in Chile, with plans to roll out to more of South America and Europe by early next year.

The company has been consulting with a brewmaster to get the flavor just right, and plans subtle packaging with no obvious nods to the TV show—just an exact replica of the cartoon brew that will play like an inside joke for Simpsons superfans.

As for the domestic market, outside of the “Simpsons” section of Universal’s theme parks in Orlando and Los Angeles, no Duff is available in the U.S., but Fox isn’t ruling it out.

“I think there’s potential to have Duff everywhere in the world,” said Jeffrey Godsick,president of the media company’s consumer products division. (21st Century Fox and Wall Street Journal-owner News Corp were part of the same company until mid-2013.)

The global thirst for Duff is understandable. “The Simpsons” is the longest-running scripted series in television history, and so widely distributed that Fox executives say an episode is airing somewhere in the world, at all times, day or night, 365 days a year.

But why launch in Chile first? It was a case of, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Fox has been fighting the rise of unauthorized versions of the brew in the Chilean market, and has had some success. The company filed an intellectual property complaint that led Chilean police to seize contraband bottles by the tens of thousands.

But demand for rogue versions of the beer has continued to ramp up across the region, from Colombia to Mexico, and the company decided to jump in.

“Once you see enough piracy, you are faced with two choices,” Mr. Godsick said. “One is deciding to fight it, and the other is deciding to go out [into the market] with it.”

Ariel Casarin, an associate professor of strategy at the Universidad Adolfo Ibanez in Santiago, Chile, who has written about the Duff Beer intellectual property disputes in a textbook, believes that Fox has been essentially forced into the beer business by intellectual property laws that don’t generally protect fictional products.

“Because the product did not in fact exist, the argument goes that Fox cannot claim trademark on it,” Mr. Casarin said. He said putting the beer on the market puts Fox on stronger legal footing.

Manufacturers of the official Fox-licensed Duff brew will work from a recipe framework created for Fox by British brewmaster Paul Farnsworth. As for as how it tastes, Mr. Godsick isn’t much of a beer drinker himself—he favors herbal tea—but said he is pleased with the results.

“It’s a premium lager,” he said. “It’s got a very good balance of flavor and refreshment to it. It’s fairly deep golden in color. It’s got a hint of fruit to it. It’s got a caramel aromatic to it.”

Of course, any Simpsons fan would raise an eyebrow at the decidedly lowbrow Duff Beer having an aromatic of any kind, let alone a caramel one. In the episode where Homer visits the Duff brewery, bottles of the brew zoom past a quality control employee on a conveyor belt containing rodents, a syringe and Adolf Hitler’s head.

And therein lies one of the big challenges for quenching the world’s thirst for Duff: it may be famous, but it’s not famous for being good. Partly for this reason, Fox is walking a fine line when it comes to associating the beer with the show.

“Duff is inspired by the brand that’s in the show, but it begins and ends at that,” Mr. Godsick said. “It’s a completely stand-alone brand…you will not see any characters from the show involved in the marketing in any way.”

Another reason for this distance is the awkward fact that “The Simpsons,” for all its sly sexual references and sophisticated pop cultural zingers, is a cartoon beloved by children.

When Fox sued two Australian brewers in 1996 for producing the Duff brand without permission, the company’s lawyers said Fox “consistently refused” to license the Simpsons brand to alcohol and tobacco makers out of concern they were “detrimental to children.” Amid controversy stirred up by that suit, the show’s creator, Matt Groening,voiced similar concerns, according to people familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for Mr. Groening declined to comment on the current launch.

Fox had changed its mind on the matter in recent years, however, when it began selling Duff in theme parks. Then last year, it made a deal with Australian grocery giant Woolworths to license the beer. But the effort was shut down within a few months after an advocacy group filed a complaint saying the association of the beer with the popular cartoon would encourage underage drinking.

“There were some concerns around advertising to children so we decided to discontinue the product,” said a Woolworths spokeswoman.

Mr. Godsick described the Australian episode as a 10-week “test run” that helped prepare for the South American rollout that has been a year in the making.

He argues that because the show has been on the air for 26 years, “it’s such a wider audience today than it’s ever been before,” and thus also an older one, which mitigates concerns about targeting children.

Besides, the show isn’t totally devoid of warnings against underage drinking. “Now, son, you don’t want to drink beer,” Homer does tell Bart in one episode. “That’s for daddies—and kids with fake IDs.”

Source:WSJ