The 2018 Super Bowl is just around the corner and while many Eagles and Patriots fans will be watching to see what if their team comes out on top, there are lots of other people who are all about the ads. At least, that’s what the hope is for the businesses that spend more than $5 million for a 30-second spot. What’s interesting is that many of the big super bowl spots are already released to the internet, days before the big game, giving us a sneak peek. Budweiser is a favorite topic of super bowl commercial conversations because they spend a ton of money on the Super Bowl. In fact, this year, they are going to have six Super Bowl spots to the tune of $30 Million. $30 million for 3 minutes of TV time. That’s an impressive ad budget.
What’s also interesting is that Budweiser seems to be moving away from the “us against craft” mentality they have had in previous Super Bowl commercials, like in 2015 with their “Brewed the Hard Way” commercial, where they say how they are “Proudly a Macro Beer.” They doubled down in 2016 with another commercial that insinuated craft brewing was just a hobby for people who like fruity beer that is made to be fussed over.
The Good
This year, their main commercial is all about their ability to can clean water at their Cartersville facility, where they have shipped over 2.9 million cans of water to areas of disaster relief during 2017. And good on them. They were incredibly smart to use this as their main Super Bowl ad because they are highlighting something that only a brewery of their size could do; take weeks off of normal beer production to can and deliver fresh cans of water. Most if not all craft breweries don’t have the capabilities to do anything on this scale so Budweiser has figured out a way to differentiate themselves from craft beer in a positive way, rather than the mud-slinging they have done in the past.
The “Eh”
Recently, Goose Island (owned by AB InBev) released a video of their own. In it, you see the president and one founder of Goose Island head to NYC to meet with Felipe Szpigel, the president of the High End, AB InBev’s craft beer division. They meet to ask for a Super Bowl spot for Goose Island so that it can be the first craft beer commercial featured at the Super Bowl. They get shut down because apparently, 1 week isn’t enough time to come up with a $5 million commercial (giant eye-roll here).
The funny thing is that while this commercial is obviously a joke and supposed to be funny, it’s being reported on by the Chicago Business Journal as if this set up was real. They start off their article with the line, “Give the guys at Chicago’s Goose Island Beer Co. credit for thinking big. Really big.” I don’t know how they thought that this was a real business meeting when every person in that meeting is shown drinking a different Goose Island beer with the labels facing the camera.
Furthermore, this video seems like it could be a teaser to an actual Goose Island Super Bowl spot, giving them the platform of being the first “craft” beer to be featured during the Big Game. We will have to see…
Many people viewing this video will realize it’s satire. That’s all well and good, but by Chicago Business Journal writing about it as if it were a real business meeting, it definitely blurs the line between fake news and satire. Obviously, since Goose Island is from Chicago, there would be love for the brewer in the city. Maybe the news organization is in on the joke too, but it seems a bit disingenuous to report on this like it was ever actually a real scenario.
The Payoff
Budweiser’s strategy for winning at Super Bowl marketing is on-point. They focus on something that is unique to them (canning water for disaster relief) while also releasing this other video that seeks to separate Goose Island from their macro-beer parent company and paints them as the “little guy.”
So have fun watching the Big Game this year while remembering to always keep a discerning eye on how you are being marketed to and let us know what your thoughts are on the Super Bowl commercials for 2018.