Band of Buds is the US beer brand’s competition to find the best ‘Crew’ in America. What’s a Crew? Simply four friends who believe that they are the best group of friends in the country.
To enter any quartet simply logs onto the Band Of Buds website and creates their own dummy page to which they must attract fans, share content and earn points. Teams are asked tyo detail their social nights out, upload photos from Facebook.
Indeed, every photo that is liked by a contest participant is automatically posted to their Facebook wall. This helps to increase awareness for the contest with Budweiser’s target demographic.
The 12 teams earning the most points in each region are invited to compete against one another at a casting Call Party where a panel of judges will vote for a winner based on camaraderie and style.
These winners will then compete in a Las Vegas based final: a four-day, reality show-like competition. At which the official Band of Buds winners will take home $100,000 and feature in Rolling Stone magazine.
An initiative that’s all about male friendship and guys socialising was promoted via an entire takeover of the homepage of www.MLB.com on August 1st – the day after the trade deadline.
The decision to use the MLB homepage leverages the idea that going to baseball in the USA is some kind of ritual male bonding tradition.
Indeed, the purpose of the entire campaign is to associate the beer with these classic male bonding events.
Comments:
This campaign links to the ongoing trend for brands to back and sponsor ordinary people – individuals and friends (not just stars).
Not a core part of the beer brand’s backing of Major League Baseball, but an interesting campaign that further strengthens the link between Budweiser and MLB.
Towards the end of last year Anheuser-Busch dropped a lawsuit it had filed against the MLB that claimed the baseball governing body has reneged on a multi-year renewal of the sponsorship rights and reached a new agreement to become the Official Beer Of The MLB.
Since then the two brands have run several high profile and interesting campaigns in tandem.
One of these came in March when both MLB and Budweiser partnered with the ‘Here’s to the Heroes’ charity (which provides support for military families) on a campaign that saw the beer brand donate $100 for every home run hit during the regular season to the ‘Folds of Honor’ scheme which provides post-secondary educational scholarships for children and spouses of killed or disabled military personnel.
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