Word: seagram
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that involve tax revolts. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 65% of Americans said they thought superpower relations were "entering a new era." On American television the dour babushka in the old Wendy's hamburger ads has given way to the svelte Soviet customs agent who shares a Seagram's wine cooler with an American tourist...
...BRONFMANS. As the undisputed kings of the North American liquor business following America's Prohibition era, the Bronfmans were among the pioneers of cross-border investment. Their main company, Seagram (1985 sales: $2.9 billion), is now the world's largest distillery. Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Sr. shuttles regularly between the firm's Montreal headquarters and the New York offices of its U.S. subsidiary. An American citizen since 1959, Bronfman has engineered Seagram's purchase of 22.5% of the outstanding shares of Du Pont, the huge oil-and-chemicals company (1985 sales: $29.5 billion). Seagram now owns more of that firm...
Edgar's first cousins, Edward and Peter Bronfman, known in Canada as the "poor Bronfmans," have not changed their citizenship, but they have invested in the U.S. By selling half their Seagram stock during the 1960s, Edward and Peter multiplied their assets into controlling interests in more than 100 companies with an estimated total value of more than $30 billion. In the U.S., those holdings include the Maryland-based Rouse Co. (1985 revenues: $247 million) and California's Ernest Hahn real estate...
Besides weighing in with wine coolers in three flavors, Seagram last month began test-marketing an unusual liquor-based hybrid called Golden Spirits, which is flavored with natural fruit essences to produce mixtures like peach- melba rum. "They are selling extraordinarily well," says House of Seagram President Edgar Bronfman Jr. Rival distillers are blending other cocktails. Connecticut's Heublein, maker of Smirnoff vodka, is test-marketing Tropic Freezers, which turn into frozen drinks like strawberry daiquiris after about six hours in a customer's freezer...
...syrupy drinks believe that the beverages cloyingly mask their alcoholic content and thus their danger. Says Michael Vitucci, public relations counsel for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union: "In a sense, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing. People will feel it's like drinking lemonade." Seagram's Bronfman, of course, disagrees, "We make it crystal clear that these are alcoholic beverages and must be handled as such. It's not fair to say that we encourage abuse by introducing new products." Innovation is a strategy that beverage makers will stoutly defend, since the market today belongs...