In the midst of the pandemic, 10% fewer Americans participated in Independence Day celebrations in 2020 compared to the year before.

Coming off of the CDC’s announcement that if 70% of the population got vaccinated we would reach herd immunity, President Biden challenged America to reach this lofty goal by Independence Day, thus marking Independence Day as a celebration of our country’s independence and independence from COVID restrictions.

As America’s beer, we needed to help Americans rise to the challenge and get even the most disengaged and disheartened Americans to come together, applaud American resilience and celebrate what we love about America–our freedom; our national freedom and our freedom to safely assemble in the face of the pandemic.

Our plan required us to generate buzz to gain awareness for our campaign and increase vaccination rates to bring July 4th celebration rates back to pre-pandemic levels.

Budweiser set out to remind the country just how far we’ve come in the fight against COVID-19 and inspire us to come together and celebrate what we love about America, freedom— our national freedom and our renewed freedom to assemble safely. Coincidentally, 2021 marked the 25th anniversary of the blockbuster film, ‘Independence Day’ – a film that has become widely quoted on social media every 4th of July. With the movie’s 25th anniversary milestone, we saw an opportunity to tap into its cultural relevance. We brought back Bill Pullman to reprise his role as President J. Whitmore for the first time since the movie aired 25 years ago. With the help of Pullman, we kick-started the weekend with an emphatic declaration that we will not give up the fight against COVID, but for those who can do it safely, let’s come together to celebrate independence once again.

The goal of PR outreach was to generate awareness of the campaign message among general consumers. To do so, the brand made the strategic decision to highlight the nostalgic storytelling element of timely reprisal of his iconic role. In addition, messaging leaned into the free beer offer, a message that pulled through in media coverage. Target media were offered email interviews with the actor to discuss his role in the film and what it meant to return to his presidential position 25 years after the original film was released.

To ensure coverage landed on launch day, a week prior to the holiday, the team conducted embargoed outreach to targeted reporters at national, consumer, entertainment, lifestyle, food and beverage and advertising and marketing meda, followed by wide outreach to drive conversation at launch.

We created awareness-building creative designed to draw attention and drive people to watch our full length video. This included Paid social teasers, Social media content, OOH placements, and our full length hero video. The work ran from June 30-July 5 across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube.

From the start of this campaign, we wanted to inspire Americans to feel safe celebrating our independence and assemble for the first time since the pandemic. Our goal was to generate the greatest number of impressions and social engagement relative to previous Budweiser campaigns. Throughout the campaign, we garnered 1.8 Billion PR impressions and 300K social mentions, making it one of Budweiser’s most talked about campaigns on social media in 2021. In one week, our video was viewed by over 3 million people, becoming the most shared social content in Budweiser’s history, and outside of Super Bowl, it had the second highest amount of social mentions ever for the brand.

In addition, after watching the film, 24% of Americans reported being more likely to get vaccinated, and celebration rates went up to 84%, just two points lower than 2019 rates.