Budweiser goes all patriotic - Strategic genius or blunder?
http://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/marketing/is-budweisers-america-content-strategy-the-best-rebrand-ever/
Budweiser’s domestic sales are going through a rough patch. Its sales have declined for the past few quarters in a row, contributing to overall revenue declines for its parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, per USA TODAY.
Since 2014, traditional beer sales for national brands like Budweiser and Coors have lost majority market share in the US to craft beers. Budweiser’s low price point is appealing, but its high calorie content makes it less palatable even to its lower-calorie counterpart, Bud Light.
AB InBev needed a spark that could increase sales—and, ideally, something that the company could build a content strategy around. As Budweiser has always done, it looked to its advertising department, and that brain-trust had another bold idea:
“Let’s just name the beer after America?”
When news of this rebrand came out in May, it whipped up a firestorm of reactions from all across the spectrum. Research shows the commentary on social media was primarily negative: Consumers saw the rebrand as a cheap bid for nostalgia, and an easy means of capitalizing on patriotic sentiments sure to be stoked by the Fourth of July season, this year’s Summer Olympics, and the ongoing election cycle.
It’s not by coincidence that Budweiser’s rebrand will run from June until Election Day next November. But even if the motivations are transparent, marketers shouldn’t dismiss the strategy as condescending or hack. Some of us may cringe, but Budweiser’s pivot away from negative attacks on craft beers is a smart one. The company struggled to convince consumers that Budweiser could compete on the merits of its quality and taste.
So instead, Budweiser has shined the spotlight on itself and changed the conversation, all while making a bold emotional play.
A Home Run For Content
For many brands, a rebrand comes with significant risk. As Forbes points out, a study from Millward Brown last year found that changing a brand’s name can trigger a decline in sales by anywhere from 5 to 20 percent.
But some of those risks are associated with lost brand recognition. Through its “America” rebrand, Budweiser faces no such risk: It retains many recognizable branding components that make it such a strong global brand in the first place. But more importantly, its instant media coverage has spurred on incredible amounts of digital content, saturating the Web with articles, social media posts, and other forms of content that mention both “Budwesier” and “America” alongside one another.
According to Ad Age, AB InBev registered more than one billion earned impressions within 48 hours of announcing its rebrand. Those impressions cover both news reports and social media posts. Many brands risk losing some recognition and coverage when they change their name, but Budweiser’s gamble had the reverse effect: It became such a bold, noteworthy and polarizing move that nobody could help but chip in their opinion.
