IN A REVEALING and provocative look at how Canada’s beer giants battle over bucks and brands, writer Paul Brent examines the business of big beer. For decades our two largest breweries have faced off in high-stakes advertising and marketing campaigns that have infiltrated the Canadian cultural landscape and our national identity. Beginning with a behind-the-headlines look at some of these famous campaigns, Brent reveals the history of this beer duopoly, including portraits of the key players and blow-by-blow accounts of their current operations. Travelling into the bar-room backrooms, he delivers some eye-opening facts about how the breweries maintain their stranglehold on the market.

Lager Heads is a story of what makes us Canadian, and how big breweries have cannily hijacked our cultural touchstones to drive their own marketing efforts. Updated with a new afterword about the Molson family feud and investor battle to merge the centuries-old Canadian brewer with Colorado’s Adolph Coors Co., Lager Heads is an entertaining book that dares to strip the labels off an iconic industry.

Paul Brent is a journalist for the National Post, focusing on consumer and business issues. He has been following the consumer and corporate dealings of the big brewers for more than a decade, chronicling the comings and goings in the corporate suites of Labatt and Molson. He spent several years as a consumer products and marketing reporter with the Financial Post. Paul Brent lives in Toronto with his wife, daughter, faithful dog and refrigerator of cold beer.

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