Campaign evolution / The original ‘the beer behind the music’ campaign from Budweiser was developed for the Brazilian market, where the brand is positioned as a premium product. In Europe and North America, Budweiser is a mid-tier alcoholic beverage. Tagwords Google Maps is a technologically nimble extension of the first campaign and demonstrates the strength of the creative premise and adaptability of the ‘the beer behind the…’ platform.
Africa told Contagious in 2018 that Budweiser’s objective is to become a global brand and that differing brand positions are the biggest obstacle to achieving this. When creating platforms for global brands, uniformity of a core central idea is important, but flexibility results in more authentic, targeted and sharable executions in local markets. This was highlighted last year with Coca Cola’s Phonetic Can, an iteration of the famous Share a Coke platform for the South African market, with cans featuring popular local names but also their phonetic pronunciations.
Hijacking the plane / The Champions League is one of the highest attended and most watched sporting events in the world and it is sponsored by a rival beer, Heineken. The Tagwords campaign associates Budweiser with the competition through guerrilla tactics, while avoiding rights and copyright infringement from sponsors and image rights holders. Budweiser also transformed not being an official sponsor into a positive feature, selling the narrative that Budweiser is a cultural beverage by choice, not just a part of some sponsorship.
