Budweiser and Budweiser Select: different brands without real differentiation

Anheuser-Busch featured three more Superbowl commercials, two for Budweiser, the 200-year-old lager, and one for the new Budweiser Select brand, which launched just two years ago, in 2005.

In these three commercials, Anheuser-Busch again demonstrates the seemingly inexplicable advertising pattern, which cannot reasonably be expected to increase market share.

Let’s look first at Budweiser, the original lager beer brand. Surprisingly, this brand seems to have a weak marketing strategy. The beer market, like light beer, is also very large, with $30 billion in sales. Budweiser is the undisputed market leader of this market and as such should be expected to lead the charge in expanding the beer market, gaining new users of other types of beverages.

The same goes for your ad strategy, or there seems to be no ad strategy at all. The two commercials featured in the Superbowl are “Dalmatian”, one 60″ long and one 30″ long. Together, they gave me the impression that this was more publicity for publicity’s sake.

Let’s see the first commercial. Although this is a long commercial, with a full minute to play, there is no attempt at a sales idea. There is a tagline that appears exclusively at the end of a package photo.

The story is about a white dog who appears to be down, hungry, and overgrown and neglected. As a parade passes down the local main street, the dog notices a Dalmatian sitting next to the driver of one of the horse-drawn carriages, and the dog looks at the Dalmatian enviously. The dog is then splashed by a car going through a puddle, and the dirt falling on the dog generates a pattern of polka dots similar to that of a Dalmatian. So, the dog joins the carriage on the other side of the driver, and is finally petted by the pageant queen. During the ‘lucky’ ending of the commercial, a singer sings about luck being a ‘kick in the head’. That’s all. And a ‘cool’ that says “King of Beers” on the pack photo.

The other ad involves sophisticated computer graphics, showing thousands of crabs on a human-populated beach. A crab notices a bucket with two bottles of Budweiser Select sticking out of the ice into the air and calls out to all the other crabs to come and carry the bucket to a more secluded spot on the beach. Then all the crabs gather in front of the bucket with the two bottles and worship what appears to be a crab-shaped shape made up of the bucket and the bottles, with a sunset behind it, adding a glow to the combination of bucket/bottles. . All the crabs then make appropriate adoring crab sounds and movements with their claws, and the whole effect is quite charming. Here again, is the photo of the package with the tagline: “King of beers.”

Budweiser Select is supposed to be a new brand of specialty premium beer that is especially tasty, as its “Select” descriptor would suggest. Although it’s supposed to be special, it’s priced about the same as Budweiser and Bud Light, which doesn’t allow even price to support its sole reason for being.

The marketing strategy of the new beer brand seems to be aimed at the younger market, if only because they go out of their way to feature rapper and entrepreneur JayZ and feature highly sophisticated computer graphics. However, as in the case of Budweiser’s core advertising, Select’s advertising strategy appears to be unmotivated and indifferent.

The single 30″ commercial is sophisticated and interesting, if only because it’s unusual. This commercial features former Miami Dolphins celebrity coach Don Shula and rapper/entrepreneur JayZ playing a football game that is holographically projected onto the table. between them. They manipulate their respective teams with spoken instructions and hand movements. After an opening touchdown, by JayZ’s team, Don’s team scores a field goal and would have won the game, but a bystander returned the virtual ball from the virtual goal. Don then says that their next game will be played in a dome (apparently to avoid spectator-generated weather!) and JayZ replies, “Next time we’ll play for rings (which implies Superbowl rings), select “crown”.

Overall, the three commercials, for both the original Budweiser and the new Budweiser Select, left me with the impression that there isn’t much of a strategic process going on in Anheuser-Busch’s Marketing and Advertising departments.