Budweiser is the 2nd biggest beer in the UK. But it’s a highly competitive market. To continue growing, the brand needs to stay culturally relevant to a younger audience.

The BRIT Awards are the UK’s biggest music awards show. Every year, it crowns the year’s standout artists. In a progressive move toward inclusivity, this year the BRITs announced it would no longer have separate male and female best artist categories. Instead, it would have one combined, gender-neutral category for best artist.

Just one problem.

In its inaugural year, all of the nominees for the newly created best artist category were male.

As a brand that believes greatness is yours to take, Budweiser felt that female and non-binary artists were unjustly denied the spotlight that their talent deserved.

The objective for the brand was clear: Use this moment to drive cultural relevance and give up-and-coming non-male artists the spotlight to shine.

The news of the all-male nominees for the inaugural “best artist” category sent a disgruntled ripple through the music community. Publications like The Guardian summed up the reaction with headlines like “BRIT Awards: all-male best artist category reveals wider music industry sickness.”

But while it was encouraging that people were talking about this issue, talk is cheap.

As a brand that believes Greatness is yours to take, we knew that we had to take action.

So Budweiser acted to provide these artists with the opportunity to seize greatness, by providing the stage that had been denied to them by the BRIT Awards.

Our insight: Not being invited to a stage doesn’t mean you’re not great. Greatness can make anything a stage.

Our Creative Idea: Budweiser transformed an OOH site in London into an actual stage, enabling female and non-binary artists to reach the biggest, most influential names in music.

Globally, Budweiser is looking to recruit more younger drinkers, aged 18–30.

The challenge: Every other beer brand wants to recruit this important group too. To win, Budweiser needs to show that they understand this audience, building cultural relevance.

Building relevance: Primary research identified a key consumer tension: This is a generation that is tired of waiting for opportunities. They are impatient to make their mark. They know what they are capable of and just need the stage to shine.

Budweiser’s motto, “Greatness Is Yours to Take,” speaks directly to this tension. Budweiser helps young people find the conviction to chase their dreams, and provides the opportunities to realize them.

So the decision by the BRIT Awards provided us with an unmissable opportunity.

Our Strategy: If the BRIT Awards weren’t going to give women and non-binary artists a stage, we’d create one ourselves and invite them to seize greatness.

The execution: We turned an actual London Budweiser billboard into a stage that helped up-and-coming women and non-binary artists reach the UK’s top record executives.

How it worked: First, we used social media and posters to invite female and non-binary artists to perform on our billboard stage.

Then, we used foot-traffic data to find the perfect Budweiser billboard in London, near the BRIT Awards attendees’ hotels.

Next, using targeted media, we ran videos of our artist partners directly on record executives’ hotel TV screens. And then, we directly sent them special-edition Budweiser bottles inviting them to our billboard concert, hosted by famous media personality Remel London.

The outcome: Artists jumped at the opportunity to play in front of a packed crowd. And the impact extended far beyond our billboard: We broadcasted our concert on social media, and even at the BRIT Awards themselves, using our media at the O2 Arena.

We set two clear objectives for this campaign:

Drive cultural relevance for Budweiser with the important Gen Z audience

Give up-and-coming musicians the exposure their talent deserved

So how did it perform?

Cultural relevance:

We quickly earned the cultural relevance needed to help the brand grow:

Social views for Budweiser rose +1,300% during the campaign period.

Social conversation and social impressions in the UK also grew, by 102% and 125%, respectively.

And conversation about our groundbreaking billboard concert earned a 100% positive social sentiment score, showing that the campaign resonated with our audience.

Artist exposure:

The campaign helped our artist partners get the coverage that they deserved, resulting in new listeners around the world and a performance at the BRIT Awards.

But most importantly, we reached the audience that truly mattered — the record executives — resulting in a record deal for one of our artists, Mychelle, with Kobalt Music.