Hard seltzer was dominating the market in 2019, growing 232% in that year alone (compared to Anheuser-Busch’s growth of 126%). At the time, there were only two key players in the game: Truly & White Claw. But it was clear to AB that hard seltzers would continue to gain traction as an alternative to beer. Seltzers are low cal, light, refreshing, and come with a variety of flavors. Most notably, they overcome barriers typically associated with beer: bloat, caloric, and bland.

To maintain relevance with their audience’s dynamic preferences, and entice new drinkers, AB leaned on it’s biggest beer brand: Bud Light. Bud Light was well-suited to attract more people and grow the Seltzer segment. Bud Light had the power to leverage a huge media reach, and reputation for fun, to create mass appeal and grow the overall seltzer category.

But with Bud Light Seltzer came another challenge. As a brand known for light lagers, introducing a seltzer from Bud Light would raise some questions from our loyal drinkers and new audiences alike: Is it a beer? What does it taste like? What flavors are there? Is there Bud Light in it?

To educate consumers and introduce our product, we dedicated an entire panel on our packaging to answer potential questions, tackling any possible confusion.

We then found the perfect place to kickstart our educational campaign. The real, 244-person town of Seltzer, Pennsylvania became the fictional home of Bud Light Seltzer, and even received the product’s first delivery. We created a hotline for a fictional call center where our “local townspeople” could answer questions to educate consumers about Bud Light Seltzer.

We put the town's coordinates directly on the packaging, leading to a virtual scavenger hunt on Google Maps. The scavenger hunt was amplified by social partners and became Internet memes.

To also engage and reward fans, we used our commercials to hide “secret extension numbers'' for the hotline. If viewers discovered and called the numbers, they could win prizes like tickets to the Super Bowl or Post Malone concert.

Launching a hard seltzer from Bud Light was going to be a challenge for two reasons– hard seltzer was still an emerging category and Bud Light is famous for its light lager.

So we knew we would need to do some education around seltzer, and specifically Bud Light Seltzer, for our loyal drinkers and new audiences. We anticipated questions like: Is it a beer? What does it taste like? What flavors are there? Is there Bud Light in it?

We started by dedicating an entire panel on our new packaging to answer those questions, getting ahead of any confusion consumers might have had.

We then found the perfect place to kickstart our educational campaign. The real, 244-person town of Seltzer, Pennsylvania became the fictional home of Bud Light Seltzer, and even received the very first delivery of the product.

We also created a hotline for a fictional call center (and bar, of course) where our cast of “local townspeople” could answer questions and educate consumers about Bud Light Seltzer.