Budweiser Case Study

Background

Budweiser is an American-style pale lager owned and operated by Belgian multinational Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) - the world’s largest beer brewer and the largest beverage company of any kind. As the biggest brand in the AB InBev portfolio, Budweiser was perfectly positioned to challenge its competition in Montreal, Canada and it did so by aligning itself with the most iconic Canadian sport - ice hockey and the National Hockey League (NHL)!

Core Objective

The Montreal Canadiens are one of the most famous sports brands in the world. Founded in 1909 and officially called the Club de Hockey Canadien, the team is also known as the Les Habitants, or Habs for short.

With the core objective to associate the Budweiser brand with the hype of Habs game days, the popular lager brand faced a serious challenge. Its competitor, Molson, is closely connected to the Habs and Molson beer has a strong brand presence at the Bell Centre, the team’s home arena. Not only is the Canadian brewery based in Montreal itself, but Canadian businessman Geoffrey Eric Molson, is current president, CEO and co-owner of the Habs. The allegiance to the Molson brand amongst hockey fanatics in Montreal had never been stronger. 

In order to break through these barriers, Budweiser needed to devise a creative solution that would capture Montrealers’ attention. There was only one channel that was up to the task and that was out of home (OOH).

Solutions

In celebration of the NHL season, Budweiser partnered with Quebec-founded convenience store chain, Couche-Tard, to offer an exclusive weekly promotion on a case of 18 cans (335ml) available only on Saturdays. The promotion read “celebrate every goal with a case of 18 Budweiser at minimum price.”

Budweiser partnered with media agency, OOH Labs, who created a multi-dimensional strategy that incorporated the power of both traditional OOH through a partnership with Astral and programmatic DOOH, utilizing the Hivestack platform.

The traditional component of this campaign was delivered on Astral screens and included an exclusive domination of the prestigious 1000 de la Gauchetière pathway, a unique and highly impactful corridor in a high-traffic office tower and major throughway from the Bonaventura metro station into the Bell Centre. (Picture Item A below) In addition to the Gauchetière pathway, in a cheeky move, Budweiser also made their competition know that they were here to play by running two strategically placed billboards directly outside of Molson’s Montreal offices. (Picture/items B).

For the programmatic DOOH components, the brand ran a campaign to highlight the Saturday special at Couche Tard stores urging fans to take advantage of game day festivities and “Grab a case of beer”. Leveraging the Hivestack ‘Proximity Targeting’ tool, Budweiser ensured that its ad delivered on screens within a 1km radius to Couche-Tard locations. In addition, TSA and Billboard venues were selected to drive big brand impact, as well as screens that would target audiences going to the game on Saturdays or walking/driving by Couche-Tard stores. The programmatic DOOH activation was complemented by the traditional take-over delivered by Astral.

To add a more technical and innovative aspect, a cutting-edge Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) using live-scoring data ran across specific locations in the city of Montreal on Habs game days. DCO was utilized in partnership with Clinch to provide real-time scores via API integration into Budweiser programmatic DOOH ads. When the Habs team were in the lead or scored to take the lead, it would trigger a custom creative to play that highlighted the goal with Budweiser’s play on words, “Et Le Bud” plus the live score in that given moment. In French Canadian, hockey commentators famously announce “Et le buuuuuut!!” (“and it’s a GOAL!!”) when a goal is scored. If Habs were down, the custom creative to “Grab a case of beer” would play instead. Through innovative creative and real-time programmatic activation, Budweiser was able to seamlessly merge its brand with the Habs team by celebrating goal time and resonating deeply with Montrealers.

Results

By leveraging unique benefits of programmatic DOOH, the Budweiser campaign proved to be a great success, driving a 1.32x lift in consideration of the brand. The campaign also resulted in over 11,000+ incremental walk-ins to Couche-Tard convenience stores.