The brief was to show ambition.

And ambition is usually about a personal journey.

An athlete. Or an innovator. You’ve seen it before.

So instead of showing a personal journey, we made the journey personal.

The biggest journey. The mission to Mars.

Because Mars was one of 2017’s dominant cultural discussions.

Everyone was talking about how to get there.

We, instead, talked about what to bring along for the ride.

And beyond talking about it, we took action.

We partnered with retired astronauts and CASIS, which runs a division of the International Space Station (ISS).

And loaded the key ingredient for beer onto an ISS-bound Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket.

We conducted experiments in orbit to get one step closer to microgravity beer.

And committed to years of research involving Bud R&D and CASIS.

To ensure we don’t leave our culture behind when we eventually go to Mars.

Our official journey to Mars began with a panel discussion at SXSW. Here Budweiser announced its grand commitment alongside CASIS and former astronaut Clay Anderson.

We invited media and beer-lover-consumers to learn about the journey to Mars, and how

Budweiser will be a part of it.

But the program didn’t stop there. Budweiser’s innovation team also worked closely with CASIS to determine a series of experiments needed to one day reach our goal of creating microgravity beer, as there’s little oxygen on the Red Planet.

Eight months later, key Budweiser ingredients were loaded onto a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, bound for the International Space Station, as the first official experiment.

The programming inspired coverage across various media verticals, from food to tech to business news, even stimulating top space industry experts to write feature stories about our mission in outlets like TIME and Smithsonian Magazines.

Bud on Mars generated massive media attention and social conversation:

• 2,336 earned media placements

• 1.6B billion media impressions

• 521 million social impressions

Key placements:

• “Mission to space in the name of better beer” – CNN

• “When humans reach Mars, Budweiser wants to make sure there will be beer” – The Washington Post

• “You can send a man to the moon, but man is going to need beer to go to Mars” – Huffington Post

• “How good will life on Mars be if you can’t enjoy a cold beer?” – TIME

Business results:

• Biggest lift in brand health in 20 years.

• Consideration up 2.1% and brand penetration up 1.7% – and that’s a lot when you sell 4.4 billion beers per year.

And the program is only getting started. This November, the next Budweiser experiment will be launched into orbit.