Bud Light launched new Bud Light Seltzer during the pandemic. After a year of living in a virtual world, and engaging consumers through virtual content, it was important to find media outlets that could take this brand to people in real life where they could taste it – especially since the bold, fruity, refreshing taste of Bud Light Seltzer was a point of a difference among the seltzer category.

The master Bud Light brand had a legacy of connections to live music. Bud Light Seltzer wanted to continue the legacy, but give it a new look, feel and energy that encompassed the new brand proposition: Bud Light exists to bring fun to the world by connecting with its ever-growing multicultural consumer, men and women aged 21–34-year-old, with meaningful brand experiences through a passion they all share – music.

As COVID restrictions lifted, Bud Light saw an opportunity to drive trial, sampling and brand awareness for Bud Light Seltzer by leveraging music festivals and live music performances to reconnect with its audience and create new connections with a younger, more diverse and more vibrant demographic who are huge live music fans that crave fun, in-person social experiences with their friends.

Bud Light Seltzer’s target audience includes multicultural 21-34 year olds who are seltzer drinkers. They crave popularity and social status and champion fun and freedom of expression. As such, they are huge live music fans and strongly consider music to be a very important part of their lives. They see the brands they buy as part of their identity and social standing, so reaching and engaging with this audience where they are expressing their passion for music, fun and freedom of expression, was key.

Bud Light Seltzer Sessions went beyond the standard activation playbook by creating its own stage at the most anticipated music festivals across the U.S.: Lollapalooza in Chicago, Governor’s Ball in NYC, Firefly in Delaware, and Life is Beautiful in Las Vegas. The Bud Light Seltzer Sessions stage created new opportunities for music fans to hear and share their favorite artists in an intimate and playful setting, and fostered an environment for festival goers to create unforgettable memories with friends over Bud Light Seltzers, effecitively building brand affinity.

In addition to unique music performances, the BLSS stage enabled guests to interact with the brand in exciting ways including unique photo worthy moments and the Bud Light Seltzer Stitch shop that allowed guest to create and design their own merch.

By using music festivals as a media channel, Bud Light Seltzer was able to live its brand purpose of bringing more fun into the world, and solidified its role in music at the most culturally relevant music festivals. This garnered a ton of brand love from both media and consumers. To date BLSS has received over 192 million PR impressions and 119K social impressions from the support of over 900K festival attendees while delivering over $11K in net sales with 144% lift in its Seltzer category.