Drones/IOT Mugs Front Budweiser ‘Light Up The FIFA World Cup’: Its Biggest Ever Global Campaign

Early May saw Budweiser launch its largest global campaign ever as it leverages its FIFA rights ahead of the 2018 World Cup kick-off in June with a squadron of drones and a collection of high-tech beer mugs.

The campaign, called ‘Light Up The FIFA World Cup’, champions Budweiser’s dream of bringing people together while also engaging, energising and inspiring the 3.2 billion football fans watching the World Cup.

Budweiser, the official beer sponsor of the World Cup for 32 years, aims to ‘encapsulate the unparalleled euphoric energy of the world’s biggest sporting event’.

Prior to the Russian tournament’s 14 June start, Budweiser’s multi-phase, integrated activation programme opened with a futuristic commercial that features Buds delivered by drone to thirsty football fans in their seats at the stadium.

While Budweiser’s hero commercial won’t actually air on US TV, the brand’s St Louis birthplace is featured in the spot’s narrative as the starting point for a fictional drone journey around the world to Russia.

The video, which features a new version of Apollo 440’s 1999 hit ‘Stop the Rock’, is running on TV in several markets and is amplified across its digital and social platforms from YouTube,

and Instagram,

The four year wait is coming to an end. It’s time to #LightUpTheWorldCup. See more of our FIFA World Cup film in our Story. #WorldCup #Budweiser

A post shared by Budweiser (@budweiser) on May 8, 2018 at 1:04am PDT

as well as Facebook and Twitter.

The four year wait is coming to an end. It’s time to #LightUpTheWorldCup. #WorldCup #Budweiser pic.twitter.com/QPnvqZXWOd

— Budweiser (@Budweiser) May 8, 2018

The video comes in 15-, 30- and 90-second versions for television and social media and is supported by multiple assets and content pieces linked by the hashtags #Budweiser, #WorldCup and #LightUptheWorldCup.

The extended cut version sees a wayward drone, called Bud 1876, find its way to a beerless fan at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.

The spearhead spot, developed in harness with creative agency Anomaly New York (and directed by Jake Scott), is the lead creative in what parent company Anheuser Busch InBev describes as ‘the largest campaign in its history when measured by investment and reach’.

“This is a fun energetic story, in delivering beer and energy in an elevated and unexpected way. It’s the most epic beer delivery of all time,” says Budweiser’s global marketing VP Brian Perkins.

As well as television, the campaign is deploying across packaging, digital, social, experiential and out-of-home.

The lead spot also features fans cheering and activating Budweiser’s Red Light Cups and these are another notable strand of the activation.

The brand will distribute noise-activated Budweiser ‘Red Light Cups’ – which light up in response to crowd noise.

All beer sold in the World Cup stadiums will be poured into these Internet Of Things drinking cups, while Budweiser also plans to deploy them at viewing parties across the globe.

In total, the brewer anticipates that eight million of the teched-up glasses will be distributed globally, including unique versions for every match.

Budweiser has previously used high-tech, action-enabled cups for some of its other sponsored sporting events.

Budweiser claims its Red Light Cup is the first-ever noise-activated cup: the base is equipped with a microphone that detects changes in decibels, activating LED lighting.

Including this year’s NFL season opener at the New England Patriots stadium where the Bud Light branded Touchdown Glasses lit up blue after every Patriots scoring play (see case study).

Perkins adds that the campaign has been deliberately planned and based on our judgement of the current interest in the World Cup and interest in football.

The brand’s marketers and its external teams analysed trends and media insights and decided 8 May was the optimal moment to launch the campaign.

The beer’s activation spans more than 50 markets: the digital and social assets are global, while the brand is focusing its media support in China, Brazil, India, the UK, as well as in the host nation Russia and other countries that the Bud brand has recently entered such as South Africa, Colombia, Nigeria, Ecuador and Peru.

In the UK, the brand began leveraging its England team partnership for the World Cup in late March with a ‘Bless This Beer’ initiative fronted by former England and Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard.

We've teamed up with football legend Steven Gerrard to launch #BlessedBeer! Our tanker is touring the country ready to be signed & blessed by fans before heading to our breweries. Get a limited-edition Budweiser #BlessedBeer pack in June, ready for the FIFA World Cup™ #LightItUp pic.twitter.com/vcXGfSLchE

— Budweiser UK (@BudweiserUK) March 28, 2018

This followed its early March sponsorship extension deal

Official beer sponsor of The @England Football team, @WembleyStadium and the @EmiratesFACup from August 2018. Bring it on! https://t.co/cEhiK1sbqs

— Budweiser UK (@BudweiserUK) March 1, 2018

and represents a repeat campaign following in the footsteps of a similar ‘Made By You’ team/fan focused beer batch brew initiative back in summer 2016 for UEFA’s European Championships (see case study).

Other strands of the UK, local market activation programme include the ‘Bud Bot’ (positioned as the ultimate FIFA World Cup guide and designed to help fans find the nearest bar showing the games, or get a Bud delivered to their door, plus offering prizes, quizzes and exclusive Man of the Match content) and the ‘Bud Boat’ (a self-styled ultimate UK FIFA World Cup viewing experience which, for £10 per ticket, offers a huge viewing screen showing all key matches throughout the tournament: the Bud Boat’s decks open two hours before kick-of ffor pre-match excitement, followed by a river cruise with epic views and ice cold Budweiser, plus street food and post-match entertainment).

While other country specific Budweiser’s activation initiatives included a limited range of World Cup themed bottle designs.

The brand launched eight unique designs revolving around the national colours of several of China’s favourite and the world’s highest profile national teams: including Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Russia.

The collectables were created by brand design agency Jones Knowles Ritchie Shanghai and were available across 200,000 touch points in 25 cities and featured in TV, OOH and in-store marketing activity.

Comment:

This might genuinely be the first modern World Cup where TV commercials aren’t the default spearhead strand of activation or ambush, but this spot is one of the standout ads from Russia 2018: indeed, by the end of the tournament it had generated more than 30m views on YouTube alone.

Drone swarm activations are an increasingly common sight at sports events: lead by Intel’s work at the Super Bowl,

and the Winter Olympics.

This spot (sort of) places them at the FIFA World Cup – considered by many marketers as the single largest sporting event in the world.

This year’s tournament runs from 14 June to 15 July.

“Our campaign is the largest in our company’s history, and it demonstrates how we are bringing together fans from around the world over beer and their shared passion for football,” says Miguel Patricio, CMO of Anheuser-Busch InBev.

“Our campaign captures the celebratory, upbeat and premium experience of the Budweiser brand, and fans will continue to see this come to life through our ongoing activations for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.”

Perkins argues that the Russian 2018 World Cup will be the most watched event in the history of the human race’ and describes it as an ‘epic global holiday’ that only comes around every four years.

“Our job as a premium beer brand is to make an event like this more fun, more celebratory and more social. Our whole campaign is centred around this sense of euphoric energy around the world and our call to action is to light up the FIFA World Cup,” adds Perkins.

As with all sponsor and ambush advertisers activating around Russia 2018, the fact that the USA failed to qualify means that Budweiser and other sponsors (particularly US headquartered brands) face a tough call on how much energy and expenditure to put behind campaigns in the United States (where TV ratings, on broadcaster Fox, are likely to suffer by the absence of Team USA).

“The US continues to be an important market for us – it’s our brand’s home market. But our World Cup campaign will be more limited there,” Brian Perkins, VP of global marketing for Budweiser, said in a statement.

“However, given the global reach of the FIFA World Cup, this campaign is bigger than any one market,” he added.

Fox Sports, which will broadcast the Cup in the USA, has sought to drive tournament interest through a campaign called ‘Root for Your Roots’.

This campaign, run in partnership with genetic-research firm 23andMe, aims to encourage viewers to back the team with ties to their ancestral origins.

Other statistics suggesting serious Russia 2018 success for the official FIFA beer came from MediaCom North research which showed Budweiser clocked-up over 55,000 total mentions on Twitter through its #ManoftheMatch content and was the top brand for social media engagement through the four week tournament (followed by Ikea, Amazon, Adidas and Nike).

Budweiser connected with fans as it tapped into a key moment of every World Cup match through its official FIFA Man of the Match activation.

Links:

Budweiser

http://www.budweiser.com/

https://www.budweiser.co.uk

https://www.youtube.com/user/budweiser

https://twitter.com/budweiseruk

https://twitter.com/Budweiser

https://www.facebook.com/BudweiserUK

https://www.facebook.com/Budweiser

https://www.instagram.com/budweiser/

https://www.pinterest.com/Budweiser/

Anomaly New York