Social MediaRunning head: ANHEUSER BUSCHSocial Media Monitoring ReportEmily Roche & Jeremy WatrubaGeorgia Southern UniversityFebruary 10, 20101

Social MediaPurposeAnheuser-Busch is one of the leading beer producers in the world with 49.2 percent of all beer sales in the U.S. coming from them. They have12 breweries in the U.S. and the two best-selling beers in the world, Budweiser and Bud light. The company has gone through somechanges, though, since its creation, “Eberhard Anheuser acquired the Bavarian brewery in 1860and renamed it E. Anheuser & Co. In 1864, his son-in-law, Adolphus Busch, joined the companythat would later become Anheuser-Busch.”http://www.anheuser-busch.com/History.html.Since then, Anheuser-Busch has been a consistent leader in the mass production of beer, aluminumcans, new products, and popular super-bowl commercials. They also sponsor severalorganizations and are one of the leading companies in aluminum recycling.In December 2006, Anheuser-Busch declared a new CEO to better manage their multi- billion dollar company after hearing of Miller’s new, more aggressive campaigning against A-Bhttp://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/30/8391808/index.htm August Busch IV currently serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Anheuser-Busch InBev and has been working there for nearly 20 years.There are several reasons to follow Anheuser-Busch and their quest for continual better- beer making. But the most relevant hits that social media have shown about their current “buzz”are their 2010 super-bowl commercials and their recent ownership shift to a Belgian company,InBev. There are seemingly endless opinions of each of these topics on various social media.Their super-bowl commercials have created laughs among many, as well as disappointment andeven despair among others. Anheuser-Busch’s shift to Belgian ownership has struck up virtualconversations ever since its occurrence in October 2009. This report seeks to explore variousviewpoints from social media gathered from January 15 to February 9, 2010.MethodologyIn order to conduct the research on Anheuser Busch a variety of social media networkswere used. Twitter was a helpful tool because many people were tweeting on what they thoughtof the super bowl. Anheuser-Busch is always a heavy weight when it comes to advertising in thesuper bowl and this social network can be used as a tool for those working for Anheuser Buschto get feedback on what people thought of their commercials. Facebook was another socialmedia network that was put to use. Groups were formed on facebook that showed either supportfor the company or people who were worried about the company’s recent development. Thesegroups are strictly for fun and the company does not have anything to do with them. On the other hand Anheuser Busch does have a facebook page in which they tried to use to their advantage.The company was using the social network for fans to vote on several different commercials thatthey would like to view during the superbowl. The social networking site, Myspace, was littlehelp to the monitoring. The site had pages that belonged to Anheuser Busch for people to posttheir opinions on the products and advertisements. Blogs searches as Technorati, IceRocket, andgoogle blog search were valuable tools in monitoring. Each of these sites helped find blogs thatwere relevant to what one was looking for.The time frames of Tweets were from February 8, 2010 and February 9, 2010. Thefacebook and myspace pages were all up to date as of February 9, 2010. The blogs on Anheuser Busch varied in the time frame. The blogs found on IceRocket were all posted on February 9,2010. The posts that were found on Technorati were posted in the time frame of February 5,2010 until February 9, 2010. Google search blog.com the nuggets that were found from this site

Social Mediadate back from February 7, 2010 until February 9, 2010. All of the information that was foundduring the social monitoring time was after the super bowl which is an important time for thecompany Anheuser Busch because they are known for their popular advertising. The creditabilityof the sources that were used can be determined only by how the reader agrees or disagrees withwhat the person is expressing. All the sites that were used are ones for people to be able to saytheir opinion on a matter. This is all creditable because when a company is monitoring theconsumer’s desires they need to hear the consumer’s opinion in order to make the product onethat people will continue to invest in.ResultsAforementioned, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Icerocket, and Technorati were used tocompile opinions about Anheuser-Busch pertaining to super-bowl commercials and ownershipchange of the company. Every form of social media included various people from around theworld explaining their views and opinions of the current events. Many Twitter subscribers werefollowers of both of these topics. Most of the nuggets we received from Twitter on the subject of the 2010 Bud-Light and Budweiser super-bowl commercials were thrilled with the outcome. One person claimed “Anheuser-Busch InBev Claims Three of Top 10 Super Bowl Commercials - St.Louis News - Daily RFT.” Another person declared, “Anheuser-Busch was my favorite TV adduring the big game!” Not all were so enthusiastic about the outcome of this year’s commercials.A less pleased Twitter subscriber had this to say, “King of Ads: Anheuser-Busch falls from perch: The advertising world is taking notice of a low-budget Super Bowl.” These results showthat most people enjoyed Anheuser-Busch’s commercials but others were concerned with thequality and supposed low budget of the beer promotion.Because of the buzz created by the super-bowl, it was much more difficult to find hits onTwitter about the recent change of ownership. Also there are proposed plans of the companymoving its century-old brewery from St. Louis to New York. Both of these recent occurrencescreated more hits on Twitter than the new Belgian ownership shift.Facebook proved to be an abundant source of buzz about the company’s ownershipchange. There are several fan groups expressing a range of opinions about the shift. One group istitled “RIP Anheuser-Busch” with 753 group members discussing how the company was recentlyfrom the traditional American company that it was known for, to a company bought by theBelgians for over $2 billion. There are many outraged beer drinkers that posted comments aboutthe change saying that it wasn’t right to alter the origin of the greatest American Lager,Budweiser. There are 500 additional groups with Anheuser-Busch’s ownership change beingtalked about on Facebook. Posts range anywhere from people confessing their undying supportfor the company to people who are boycotting them completely for their recent sell out.MySpace was a bit more difficult to track because it seems that hardly anyone uses itanymore. Anheuser-Busch actually has a MySpace account where they mostly talk about their sell out to InBev. The MySpace results supported no concrete finding that seemed to foster anopinion other than that of the company.The results provided by Icerocket were oriented more toward the super-bowl ads. Manyof the data collected proved that many football fans were, in fact, not impressed with the 2010Bud Light lineup. One upset fan had this to say, “Ok, I get it. Anheuser Busch has become themarquee sponsor of the Super Bowl and has given us many decent laughs in the past but this year it was damn-near pathetic to see them throw seven steaming piles of “advertisements” at the walland have NONE of them stick. No, I’m not impressed by your house of beer, your ability to sing3