Pabst Brewing For Sale–And We Can Buy It
Pabst Brewing Company, the owner of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz and other old-line beer brands, is on the sale block according to the New York Post.
Pabst’s current owner is a non-profit company named the S&P Company according to Wikipedia. They have hired BofA Merrill Lynch to find a buyer willing to pay around $300 million. The sale effort is apparently the result of a deadline imposed by the Internal Revenue Service. Federal tax laws don’t allow charitable foundations to own for-profit companies.
If this is true, don’t ask me how they bought it in the first place… but their mistake may be our opportunity to own a piece of Pabst. Two ad agencies (red flag!) have teamed to launch buyabeercompany.com to crowdsource the purchase of Pabst Brewing Company.
Forza Migliozzi & The Ad Store are using crowdsourcing principles to try to purchase the American icon. For the cost of a single bottle of beer, you will have crowdsourced ownership in Pabst Brewing Company. The minimum pledge is $5… with levels rising all the way to $250,000.
Here’s where it gets a little vague… once the purchase amount is met (umm, $300 million dollars!) you will receive a letter of congratulations and “a crowdsourced certificate of ownership suitable for framing, as well as, enough beer matching your ownership.”
According to the “exciting real-time Countdown-O-Meter” they’ve reach pledges totaling $35,785.
With eyebrow raised, I pledged $100 in the name of Brian’s Belly… after all, I don’t want to miss out on ownership in company like Pabst. And owning a whole brewery makes more sense than my original plan to buy 300 million individual cans (joke credit: The Onion).
I’m sure that two ad agencies (you know, companies that create and implement wacky new approaches to reaching the consumer) didn’t really think too hard into the legalities and difficulties of crowdpurchasing a $300 million company.
But, if I end up with a piece of Pabst, it will be worth the distinct possibility that I did nothing more than pledge my address to a email harvester.
