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When hard times strike your beverage company, what do you do?

I think most people can agree that being told to relax or calm down during a heated conversation can be a bit enraging.

Whether you’re looking for the perfect words for a novel, searching for the right balance of color in a painting or debating on the notes for a musical composition, finding something inspiring to act as your muse can be a difficult task. The same can be said for the beverage market as manufacturers are looking for that perfect formulation.

As we celebrate our liberty and patriotic pride this month, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on some recent acts of charity within the beverage community that have truly shown that we are one united industry with common causes.

The excitement surrounding the lives of flappers and fun-seekers of the Roaring ’20s still enchant many of us almost a century later. This culture also recently inspired some interesting beverage marketing pushes, particularly following the premiere of Warner Brothers Entertainment’s “The Great Gatsby” movie last month.

It’s amazing how much can change in a year’s time. As our staff began compiling Beverage Industry’s list of the Top 100 beverage companies (page 24), I realized the magnitude of changes that have taken place in the beverage realm within the last year.

By the end of this month, it will finally be summertime. For those of us in cold-weather states, it seemed like summer was never going to come, but now it’s finally time to enjoy all the fun activities, food and beverages of the season.

As RealBeanz Director of Public Relations and Social Media Jenna Burke told me in last month’s Up Close With story, it can be hard for consumers to experience a product and develop a relationship with a brand if the main connection with a brand is through social media and advertising. Instead, it’s the face-to-face encounters with a brand at events that really help consumers become fans, she said.

If life were a game of Monopoly, many marketers would be preparing to “go back to go,” according to a report by The Nielsen Co. and BoomAgers LLC titled “Boomers: Marketing’s Most Valuable Generation.” Once a generation reaches the cut-off age of 49, marketers typically turn their focus to a younger group in the 18- to 49-year-old range, the report states. However, this shift in attention is not such a great idea, it suggests.

I recently returned home from my first of seven weddings this year. Although the travel might not be the most exciting part of the upcoming nuptials, hearing the individual couples explain what their new union means to them is always enjoyable. But partnerships aren’t only important in marriage. In actuality, consumer packaged goods companies are constantly forming their own partnerships in order to strengthen their brands and deliver to consumers.