Context

Young people aged 18-24 seek to build a social reputation either to stand out.

Wielding a bottle of premium beer served to express your personality, like choosing sneakers, clothes, or a gadget, was about the image you wanted to convey.

The leading brand had some triggers that conquered young people. A simple "pure malt" quality attribute. Millionaire sponsorships in the UEFA Champions League, to be James Bond's beer and the official beer of the biggest music festivals in Brazil. Relevant properties, but without an brand personality. All pay to paste aspirational attributes into the brand.

We didn't have liquid differentials to go up against "pure malt". We didn't have aspirational sponsorships. But we did have something priceless: researching the historical relationship with culture, we saw that the most sports and music icons drank Budweiser in their moments of leisure or celebration, and the brand had paid nothing for it. We were chosen.

If there's something that young people love, it's seeing a brand have a contending, transgressive, attitude. We noticed that campaigns like "My Way" by adidas and "Be Stupid" by Diesel were charming to them. Why not go further? Why not be transgressive by letting people know that the icons chose us?

Challenge

We had something powerful - historical footage of Larry Bird, Kirk Gibson, Spain's National Team, Jordan, Jagger, Hendrix, and Michael Jackson drinking Bud in their personal moments. The image of these icons with Bud would already have an added value for the young man.But of course, we needed a lot of money to pay for all the image rights, and even if we did, it would become just another campaign.

Thus came our challenge: how to show these images without paying anything for the rights, and how to do this in such a way that young people would actually get involved?

We showed that the brand behaved like the youth: bold, with a touch of rebellion. We decided to show these pictures without paying to use them.

Solution

If you searched for Budweiser + date + place or event important to sports or music, you'd probably find a picture of a legend with a Bud in his hand - rather than promoting these photos, we decided to instigate young people by having them search for these images where they search for anything: on Google.

Execution

We created an integrated campaign with keywords:

Google it by date + Budweiser + place/occasion and the signature Budweiser. The beer behind the Sports in the tags to sports idols' images, and the beer behind the music to music legends.

We started spreading ads on Google according to each user's search history.We went for a cross-media strategy, exploring all the places connected to pop culture: stadiums, pubs, and clubs, and even projecting our message near music festivals and championships we weren't sponsoring.

That's when we thought if we are doing so well in Brazil, why not take it to other countries where we need to encourage consideration and build differentiation?