Remember when you had to wait until Super Bowl Sunday to see the ads? No more.
Just like its brewery sibling, Bud Light, Budweiser is out chasing the press prior to the Super Bowl. The A-B folks seem to want to generate favorable stories about the ad The King of Beers will debut on the king of games (or sooner, if they decide to jump the gun as Bud Light did a week or two back).
Just like its brewery sibling, Bud Light, Budweiser is out chasing the press prior to the Super Bowl. The A-B folks seem to want to generate favorable stories about the ad The King of Beers will debut on the king of games (or sooner, if they decide to jump the gun as Bud Light did a week or two back).
Look! A beer ad on the cover of Adweek!
Courting the press
In an almost unprecedented move, Adweek magazine folks were. even invited to Budweiser's commercial shooting, which resulted--certainly to A-B's delight--in a cover story gushing about the filming as though a Hollywood movie was being made. Then again, if you read the advertising trade press these days, it often sounds more like Hollywood flimflam than professional advertising critique. So maybe having reporters flying to a location, staying in nice hotels, hobnobbing with the director, and eating catered meals, all on Bud's dime, is the height of "press relations." It certainly worked this time because Adweek's resulting coverage is fawningly entitled "Return of the King."
Ah, the power of catered food!
In an almost unprecedented move, Adweek magazine folks were. even invited to Budweiser's commercial shooting, which resulted--certainly to A-B's delight--in a cover story gushing about the filming as though a Hollywood movie was being made. Then again, if you read the advertising trade press these days, it often sounds more like Hollywood flimflam than professional advertising critique. So maybe having reporters flying to a location, staying in nice hotels, hobnobbing with the director, and eating catered meals, all on Bud's dime, is the height of "press relations." It certainly worked this time because Adweek's resulting coverage is fawningly entitled "Return of the King."
Ah, the power of catered food!
Buried under the Adweek reporter's yakking about the actors, the shooting sites, the gritty "Revenant" inspiration (Thought we were exaggerating the Hollywood angle, did you?), the article eventually tells us what this ad is all about: "This is the story of the original self-made man, one of the founders of the American Dream, making it the hard way...."
Which struck us as an advertising idea we'd seen before...
Which struck us as an advertising idea we'd seen before...
This "Mister Coors" ad didn't run all that long. We suspect it suffered from the unavoidable trap of "history recreated." It was dismissed as inauthentic. On the one hand, the authentic facts in the story are interesting and distinctive, but when the ad puts a paid actor on the screen to convey this, no matter how well filmed, the authenticity kinda washes away.
In this snippet of the new ad from Budweiser-via-Adweek, see if it feels more like authentic history... or Hollywood hoohah...
In this snippet of the new ad from Budweiser-via-Adweek, see if it feels more like authentic history... or Hollywood hoohah...
That could actually be a scene from "The Revenant." We'll have to wait for the other 45 seconds in the finished ad to see whether it's all style as seen here, or includes enough interesting historical facts to carry the day.
A better route to authenticity
Meanwhile, if distinctiveness by way of authenticity is really what the brewer thinks will move Budweiser sales, we'd recommend facts over fantasy. Take, for example, the facts--and the complete absence of fantasy--in this short piece...
A better route to authenticity
Meanwhile, if distinctiveness by way of authenticity is really what the brewer thinks will move Budweiser sales, we'd recommend facts over fantasy. Take, for example, the facts--and the complete absence of fantasy--in this short piece...
Now, before you conclude that MillerCoors must be smarter than Anheuser-Busch on the strength of communicating authenticity for their beers, you may want to note that in nearly a year on YouTube, this work garnered about 1,300 views. Promoting it mustn't have been much of a brewery priority.
Just imagine the power had that authenticity been delivered to the SuperBowl's 188 million viewers!
Just imagine the power had that authenticity been delivered to the SuperBowl's 188 million viewers!
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