Advertising Case Study

Budweiser
Company Background
Budweiser is a beer brand from Anheuser-Busch that has a commercial presence in over 130 countries around the world and a particularly high number of sports fans among its customer base. Introduced in 1876, the bohemianstyle lager is popularly known as the king of beers.

Facebook Executive Summary

Client:

Objective
The World Cup soccer tournament in South Africa in June 2010 offered Budweiser a chance to supplement its other advertising with a campaign on Facebook, something it had done successfully in the past. One of Budweisers key goals was to meaningfully engage with World Cup fans around the world. The campaign aimed to bring customers together through a love for soccer and a sense of national and team pride and to help Budweiser drinkers around the world get closer to the game.

Objective: Harnessing the passion of global Budweiser enthusiasts and sports fans Solution: Bringing Budweiser and soccer fans closer to the game through a range of interactive features on the Bud United Page Key Lessons: Budweiser saw the potential to draw people around a common interest and bridge geographical distance in a way only possible through a truly global platform The simplicity of the Paint Your Face application that allowed Facebook users to alter their profile image increased engagement by making it easy, natural and fun.

Approach
To launch its Bud United Show Your True Colors campaign on Facebook, Budweiser first turned to its existing Facebook Pages the free public profiles that enable companies to share their business and products with Facebook users on an ongoing basis. Budweiser has several such Pages, including the Budweiser Page for the United States and the Budweiser UK Page. The campaign was a large-scale operation, using print and TV ads in many markets. To get it off the ground, it was key to let people who had already connected to the

Facebook enabled us to activate on the World Cup global stage connecting Budweiser with passionate fans, and ultimately overcoming geographic distance to feel closer to the game
Andrew Sneyd, Global Advertising Director, Budweiser

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other Budweiser Pages know that a special new Facebook Page, Bud United, was coming. Budweiser used the publishing feature on its Pages to spread the word about its World Cup-related Page. As it was a broad approach, the company used both Premium Page Ads on the Facebook homepage and Marketplace Ads, which appear on users profile pages. The ads were directed at people who had already connected to Budweiser Pages on Facebook. The company also used Facebooks anonymized and aggregated targeting capabilities to reach people who had listed keywords relating to sports and beer in the Likes and Interests sections of their profiles. We knew that passionate sports fans have a really high index with beer drinkers and we targeted our campaign to the markets where Budweiser is active, says Budweiser Global Advertising Director, Andrew Sneyd. Our core markets are actually quite geographically removed from South Africa and so any tools we could provide to make people feel closer to the game, we explored. The Bud United Page showcased several interactive features, developed by DDB Worldwide the Canadian firm Grip Ltd, including the Bud House, in which a super-fan or ambassador from each of the 32 countries playing in the World Cup was invited to live in a reality-TV-style house in South Africa. These super-fans reported back to their country and the rest of the world through videos on YouTube and the Facebook Page made specifically for each Bud House super-fan. Another aspect of the campaign was a Paint Your Face application, developed by Canadian firm GRIP Limited. This feature allowed Facebook users who had connected to the Bud United Page to choose from among different national colors related to the World Cup. By doing so, they could restyle their own Facebook profile image to show their team allegiance in a personalized way. Since this involved transforming the users Facebook profile image, all of that persons friends could

immediately see that the user had clicked to like Budweiser and could also virtually paint their profile image. The Paint Your Face application was an opportunity to show your entire Facebook friend group your allegiances, who you were cheering for, and do it in a really fun way, says Andrew.

Results
The campaign went global. It was created for multiple regions Canada, USA, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Bahrain, and many more but it was embraced by the world, as shown by the hundreds of thousands of users who participated from all over the planet. The Bud United Pages growth was explosive, with 6 people per minute joining in and liking the Page during the first days of the World Cup

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As a sign of the high engagement levels generated by the campaign, some 2.7 million people painted their faces virtually. More than 900,000 people clicked to like Budweisers Bud United Page by the end of the campaign. The viral aspect of Facebook led to people telling the friends they were connected to on Facebook about the campaign, increasing the number of people connected to Budweiser Pages from countries where the beer is not commercially sold.

The Future
The success of this campaign, which was run through the overarching Bud United Page, was compelling to the company. According to Andrew, It creates a great opportunity for us moving forward to make Bud United have more engaging, ongoing dialogue with these fans around the world and their connection to sport and soccer. The brand is currently working on its next large-scale campaigns but keeping in mind all of the key success points that made this one. The brand is in planning for next year while adding tools and opportunities for people to connect in the balance of this year as well.