Introduced 1986 | ||
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Manufacturer Dr. Pepper Snapple Group Related products | ||
A&W Cream Soda is a cream soda carbonated soft drink introduced by A&W Root Beer in 1986. A&W Root Beer was first sold at a Veterans Day parade in Lodi, California in 1919 and the company established in 1922 by Frank Wright and Roy Allen. The first product they created was A & W Root Beer. It was not until 1986 that A&W Brands, headquartered in White Plains, N.Y. introduced A&W Cream Soda and A&W Diet Cream Soda through its network of franchised bottlers and distributors. Although cream soda had been created in 1852 by E.M. Sheldon, A&W Brands was one of the first American companies to make it commercially. In 1993, A&W Brands was purchased by Cadbury/Schweppes, and in 1995 Cadbury/Schweppes purchased the Dr. Pepper/Seven-Up Company, which made A&W a part of the Dr. Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. In 2001, DPSU purchased the Snapple Beverage Group (formally TriArc Beverages), and moved the New York-based company operations to its new headquarters in Plano, Texas. This acquisition put A&W within the same company as the top soda brand companies and made A&W Cream Soda the top brand in cream sodas.
Contents
Marketing
In 1991, A&W had its most popular cream soda campaign. They produced a summer advertisement with Snoopy and Woodstock displayed on the entire can. Snoopy and Woodstock are characters from the Peanuts Gang comic strips written by Charles M. Schulz. Snoopy can be seen playing baseball, having a cookout, lifting weights, surfing, walking the beach, riding a bike, jumping hurdles, and listening to music. These cans were very popular among buyers. These images can be seen on regular A&W cream soda as well as Diet A&W cream soda cans.
Coca-Cola’s first polar bear print advertisement made its debut in France in 1922, and for the next 70 years, polar bears appeared sporadically in print advertising. A&W, the leading root beer marketer, filmed their own commercial using polar bears in the summer of 1992. In that commercial, a real polar bear is seen in contrast to a mechanical polar bear that is ice-skating in a fancy skirt. The commercial used the polar bears to distinguish a difference between regular A&W cream soda and sparkling A&W cream soda. They use the real bear yawning to embody the regular cream soda, and they use the ice-skating polar bear to represent the sparkling cream soda. The polar bears are used as a marketing technique to appeal to a large audience. "They are white, which is the color of innocence, even though in this case it's 800 pounds of skin-ripping innocence," Mr. Gilbert said.
Also, in 1992 Pepsi-Cola International and A&W Brands Inc. worked together over a signed agreement to increase the spread of A&W's bottled products in Asia. The company anticipated to sell $500,000,000 of A & W soft drinks in Asia within the span of ten years to make the company's brands as prevalent as Pepsi, which was already distributed in Guam and Indonesia. In 1994, A&W put $7,000,000 into their marketing promotions. They partnered with the show Baywatch to produce greater sales for their product. Baywatch was ranked second among all of the popular TV shows, so they knew this was a great opportunity. In-show placement on four episodes of Baywatch appeared. The advertisement was shown as sponsors of a boogie board test during the episode. The winner of the boogie board contest on the television show would receive a year's supply of A&W.
A&W cream soda also spent $1.5 million in ads commemorating "a little sparkle in a vanilla world." A new A&W campaign from New York, which featured regular people, kids to grandparents, all describing their satisfaction of A&W. The campaign took a different direction from A&W's common and past humorous ads, using sepia-toned images. Their new tag-line introduced: “authentic.”
In addition to making A&W well known in different countries, using Snoopy, making new marketing campaigns with polar bears, and using the show Baywatch, A&W cream soda has had a few commercials. Joe Isuzu appeared in cream soda commercials as well as William Sanderson and the Sumangala Band.
A&W Cream Soda
Serving size: 12 fl. oz. (240 mL)
Amount per serving:
Ingredients: Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar, sodium benzoate (preservative), natural and artificial flavors, caramel color, citric acid, yucca extract, flavored with vanilla extract, caffeine.
— I'm looking at a can of it right now, so these numbers are up-to-date. Previously it mentioned 8 oz. contained 30 mg of sodium, but the 12 oz. can I am drinking says there is 70 mg of sodium. Also, my can shows 170 calories per 12 oz, and 46 grams of carbs, of which 45 come from "sugars" including high-fructose corn syrup.
A&W Diet Cream Soda
Serving size: 8 fl. oz. (240 mL)
Amount per serving:
INGREDIENTS: Carbonated water, sodium benzoate (preservative), aspartame, caramel color, citric acid, yucca extract, natural and artificial flavors, caffeine.