The following observation was passed on to me by my friend, Rabbi Moshe Goldman, member of Chabad.org's Ask the Rabbi team:

Leafing through the New York Times business section (rabbis always read the business section...), I happened upon a brilliant marketing strategy being employed by Anheuser-Busch. In a departure from the approach of years' past, the advertising powers decided to narrow their focus to promoting only the "core brands" of the company, namely Budweiser and Bud Light.

Robert C. Lachky, executive vice president for global industry and creative development at Anheuser-Busch, was quoted as saying that "We have to go to the mother lode. If you focus on your core brands, the rest of the portfolio will benefit."

Pure genius. I mean, this is really a great concept. Heck of a way to live. Let's examine this idea and see how it can apply to us as people (and not mere beer buyers).

Like any company, each of us has our "core brands" in addition to the "rest of the portfolio." There are those things which are essential to our identity and those which register as peripheral and secondary.

Our core brands were, are, and forever will be the Torah and Mitzvot, G‑d's design for a purposeful, happy life. The rest of our portfolio is our careers, our moods, our wardrobe or _______ (fill in the blank).

Investing time and money in the rest of the portfolio is a terrible strategy, without a doubt. It will only lead to a confused mind, sleepless nights and most importantly, no solution or growth. The core brands carry a company or a person through the roughest of times. Dependable, solid and important; they are the reassuring bedrock of faith in an unstable market. The rest of the portfolio can be bought and sold at whim and don't really make a huge difference at the end of the day.

The Rebbe would commonly advise people who wrote to him about the various troubles they were facing in life, that the blessings and flow of life are channeled to the Jew via the conduit of Torah and Mitzvot. As such, if one needs more blessings, the surest way is to "widen" that conduit, by increasing one's commitment to Torah and Mitzvot.

If I may paraphrase the Rebbe's words: Invest in your core brands, and watch the rest of your portfolio benefit.

I wonder what Mr. Lachky has been reading lately…