The Bud Light Pitch
July 9, 2013
Good Afternoon Anheuser-Busch,
Are you looking for fresh new advertising ideas for Bud Light? Have you grown tired of working with bloated, jaded agencies? Or maybe you’re just feeling up for something a little weird?
Why not hand over your $200 million+ Bud Light account to Chris Philson? This youthful, excitable, cozy shop located in bustling Rochester, NY is ready to serve up a neverending series of unique, exciting, outrageous, and incomprehensible ideas!
Here We Go.
Bud Light Rear Pat of the Week
Rather than recognizing the most competitive players or most devastating plays during football broadcasts, Bud Light sponsors a segment highlighting the friendliest and most cooperative moments of the week. The hosts discuss the NFL’s top butt slaps as they show slow-motion replays with a Barry White soundtrack.
We’ll use TV and social media to encourage players to begin performing more elaborate, creative, and athletic rear pats.
Secret Handshake Maker
A free downloadable program on the Xbox Live Marketplace promotes friendliness and Bud Light by helping users create complex and exciting secret handshakes with their friends.
Users choose from a library of moves that range from simple to ridiculous. Some actions involve the use of Bud Light cans and bottles as props.
Friends can use the Kinect motion sensor to practice steps and send the list back and forth as they work together to refine it into the greatest secret handshake ever.
The Most Horrifying-Looking Man in the World
We work with top make-up artists to transform actors into the world’s most horrifying-looking people and send them into bars, clubs, and parties on friend-making missions. Armed only with Bud Light, they set out to demonstrate the beer’s unmatched ability to bring people together.
Hidden cameras capture ordinary party-goers flocking to our unnaturally made-up monsters, despite them being bald in places where people are supposed to be not-bald, and not-bald in places where people are supposed to be not-not-bald.
We’ll show how today’s youth are able to see past superficial qualities like Hitler-shaped birthmarks, and befriend people for their personalities. The Bud Light-choosing parts of their personalities.
Bud Me
We partner with Facebook to add a mysterious “Bud” button to the Timeline page of everyone of legal drinking age. Soon, friends will be “Budding” each other without knowing what effect it will have.
Our program will analyze the status updates and profile information of each person who has been Budded, and produce a personalized Real Men of Genius-style message for him or her. We’ll also offer the Buddee a coupon, worth anywhere from 1%–100% off of a Bud Light product, based on what the program determines he deserves.
Each person may be Budded once, and then the button vanishes. Those who have yet to be Budded will be begging their friends for assistance.
Dirty Language Censor
Let’s demonstrate our friendliness and sense of responsibility by removing some of the dirty words from movies on TV. We can sneak in a few ads for Bud Light while we’re at it.
“Yippee-ki-yay! Bud Light today!”
“I have had it with these anti-Bud Light snakes on this Bud Light is great plane!”
Friendliness Timeline
Let’s create a Facebook Timeline for Friendliness History. Photos, videos, and audio recordings show significant friendly moments, as facilitated by Bud Light. Regular updates will cover the entire period from the dawn of civilization to the present day.
Bud Light Internet Friendliness Award
To promote internet friendliness, let’s select a different secret polite word or phrase each week and count the number of times people Tweet it. Our website will display a meter with the current number of mentions and our goal, but will not reveal the secret word until the end of the week. If we reach our combined goal for the month, we reward the Twitterverse with the Bud Light Internet Friendliness Award.
We choose one Tweeter who had an especially nice Tweet and send a surprise celebrity to his or her home to present the award. We record the person accepting the award on behalf of all friendly internet users and add the video to a gallery on our website.
Regis Vs Bud Light
Regis Philbin used to be everyone’s favorite. He always made an effort to treat each person he met as a close personal friend. But, these days, you just need to click a button on a website to become someone’s friend. It doesn’t require any effort at all! It’s out of control!
How is Rege supposed to compete for “Likes” with a beer that is not only friendly, but smooth and refreshing as well? He decides to take to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube and do whatever it takes to earn more Likes than Bud Light has on its Facebook page. He’ll do anything short of giving away free Bud Light.
To get started, Regis must first figure out how to actually use these social sites.
Regis Impersonators
On New Year’s Eve, we send hundreds of Regis look-alikes (and one authentic Regis) to parties all across the country. The Regises appear to be there to make friends and sign autographs, but are actually on a secret mission to replace all of the Bud Light with the dull, unexciting Philbin Pilsner, a beer of his own invention.
We never reveal which Regis was the actual Mr Philbin.
Following the event, print ads display photos of the party invaders and include Philbin Pilsner stickers that protective Bud Light consumers can place over the labels on their bottles to deter others from stealing them.
Live! With Kelly and Bud Light
To further infuriate Regis, Bud Light takes over his former role as Live! With Kelly becomes Live! With Kelly and Bud Light for one day.
The guest co-host attracts more laughs and applause than Regis did in all of his years hosting. And, of course, Kelly can’t keep her hands off him.
Bud Light is voiced by John Stamos.
Be the Bud
Still less popular than Bud Light, Regis searches the world for advice. His journey takes him to an ancient Tibetan Mystic atop a Himalayan peak. The Mystic enlightens him that to be as well-liked as his rival, he must learn to think like Bud Light, act like Bud Light, and become Bud Light.
A series of TV spots chronicle Regis’ meditations. Each focuses on his attempt to channel a different aspect of Bud Light’s personality: friendliness, responsibility, refreshibility, drinkability, and party-startability.
We can also adjust supermarket coolers to house ice-cold Bud Light and ice-cold Regis.
Bud Bowl IX
For this year’s Super Bowl, Budweiser and Bud Light face off in another exciting Bud Bowl. We leave the silly little helmets behind and create the most serious and complete beer bottle-based football experience ever.
Leading up to the big game, a Bud Bowl application offers previews of the event. ESPN heavily and earnestly promotes the Bud Bowl by profiling players and making predictions in regular SportsCenter segments.
On Super Bowl / Bud Bowl Sunday, we air two TV spots, one during pregame, and one in the fourth quarter. The first shows the Bud Bowl final preparations and opening kickoff and directs fans to follow along live on their iPhones or other devices during downtime in the human game. The Bud Bowl App shows the result of every play and video highlights as they occur.
During the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, our second TV spot shows a live look-in at the final moments of the Bud Bowl.
Bud Bowl IX Climax, 2 Minute TV Spot
Open on aerial shot of Bud Field.
Al Michaels: Welcome back, folks! It’s a five point game with one second remaining!
Zoom in on Team Bud Light lining up. Score graphic appears at the bottom of the screen: Budweiser 40, Bud Light 35.
Al Michaels: Last chance for Bud Light, fourth and ten on its own 20-yard line!
Bud Light snaps the ball, star quarterback #7 drops back for one final Hail Mary pass. Unable to find an open receiver, he rushes forward into a crowd of Bud players. Just before being tackled, he shuffles a lateral to an overly-large bottle, Guard #61.
Al Michaels: This looks like the end of the line!
#61 lumbers down the field, very narrowly avoiding tackles. He finally breaks free from several defensive players and has an open path ahead, with the entire Budweiser team chasing after him.
Al Michaels: #61 is free! To the 40, the 50 yard line!
Cris Collinsworth: Unbelievable!
One of the near-tackles has jostled #61’s cap loose. He leaves a trail of Bud Light behind him as he runs.
Al Michaels: Do you see that! That last hit knocked his cap loose! He’s losing vital fluids!
Just before reaching the end zone, he collapses.
SFX: Crowd gasps.
#61 makes several futile attempts to pull himself up. He is slowly dragging himself to the end zone as the defense catches up to him.
Al Michaels: Oh! It all comes down to this! Can he make it? Here comes Team Budweiser. Here they come. Here they come…
Shot of fans in the stands, holding their breath. The camera pans before settling on Regis Philbin. At first he has a sinister grin on his face, but as the camera zooms in on him, it changes to an expression of sadness as he begins to remember…
Cut to a slow motion montage of important moments in Regis’ life. Baby Regis is born (with same haircut) – the doctor delivering him is Bud Light. Regis graduates from high school – Bud Light hands him his diploma. Regis meets his wife Joy for the first time – Bud Light introduces them.
Regis: (Quiet voice) No!
Overcome by feelings of friendship for his former rival, Regis leaps onto the field and dashes toward Bud Light #61. Regis begins kicking and batting away Budweiser bottles just before they reach #61. He picks up one bottle and throws it into another.
Regis: Bud Light! Get up, man! You can do it!
Bud Light #61 slowly gets up and inches toward the end zone before finally tumbling in.
Al Michaels: They’ve done it! Bud Light has done it! Touchdown! The most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heart-rending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of beer bottle-based football! Bud Light wins the big game over Budweiser! I have never seen anything like it in my life!
The crowd goes wild. Men grab random women or objects and kiss them. The most horrifying-looking man in the world wildly fires pistols into the air. Sasquatch weeps tears of joy. Regis thrusts #61 high into the air as the camera pulls out overhead.
Cut to Bud Light: Bud Bowl IX Champions logo card with final score: Bud Light 41, Budweiser 40.
Quick cut back to Regis as he absent-mindedly takes a sip of #61 before suddenly realizing what he’s done.
Regis: Sorry.
Bud Bowl Results
Monday’s New York Times sports section features the Bud Bowl recap as the lead story and the Super Bowl as #2.
New Consumers
Bud Light is so friendly that we refuse to steal market share from our competitors. Instead, we’ll increase sales by reaching out to the two largest untapped groups of potential customers: extraterrestrials and mythical beasts.
Alien Contact
Bud Light makes a generous donation to SETI to assist in its search for intelligent life on other planets.
We only ask that they use some of the funds to transmit the constantly-repeating message “Drink Bud Light” throughout the universe.
Translation
We use the SAP feature on TVs and the Shazam app to translate our commercials into the native languages of our new target audience (aliens, sasquatch, et cetera).
A graphic on the TV screen will alert viewers of these options.
Highway of Legends
We set up seemingly direct billboards that are each missing a piece where there would normally be a bottle. A few miles farther down the road, we add a realistic sculpture of one of our new consumers carrying the bottle away.
Social Beasts
Let’s add evidence of mythical beasts’ social behavior to Bud Light’s profile pages and activity feeds. We can also use this in banners and sponsored News Feed ads.
Even notorious recluses Like, Follow, and interact with the world’s friendliest beer.
Find Sasquatch
Let’s find the real Sasquatch and sell Bud Light to him. I haven’t really thought through how we should go about doing this yet, but when I do, you’ll probably hear about it on the news.
Bud Sub
The Goodyear Blimp rules the sky, the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile owns the streets, and now the Bud Light Submarine claims Earth’s waters.
The Bud Sub floats around high-traffic areas displaying messages on its hull, then dives below the surface to search for the Loch Ness Monster and related creatures.