Anheuser-Busch\'s Budweiser PR Campaign Love Beer. My

Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser PR Campaign

LOVE BEER. My favorite brand is by far Anheuser-Busch's top selling brand -- Budweiser. Or do I love beer? I just saw two lizards on channel forty-two tell me that Budweiser is what I crave. Anheuser-Busch has to continuously expand sales so that the corporation meets both Wall Street's and the Anheuser-Busch shareholder's 'expectations' for continued corporate profits. Well, they are not actually expectations at all -- no they are 'demands' for continued corporate profits. Therefore, it is crucial to Anheuser-Busch to convince me and the billions of beer lovers worldwide that not only do we love beer, but that we love Budweiser or one of the many Anheuser-Busch products.

It is sad to say that advertising to minors is often a part of those public relations marketing campaign. "Youth has its hazards. Cautioning adolescents about product dangers is a unique challenge for advertisers and policy makers. Given the current controversy surrounding the advertising and sale of tobacco and alcohol products to adolescents, it is important to understand how that audience attends to advertising for such products and associated cautionary statements. We report findings from an extensive eye tracking study conducted among adolescents that involved print ads and associated warning statements for tobacco and alcohol products." (Fox) So, similar to the 'Joe Camel' marketing tricks perpetrated by the tobacco industry, the alcoholic beverage companies also do their best to attract the adolescent dollar. "The teenage market in the United States is extremely lucrative. Teens are fashion and status conscious, and spend large amounts of money on clothing and entertainment. In addition to influencing household purchases, teenagers spend at least $95 billion a year 1961. Projections indicate that by 2010 the teenage population will have grown to approximately 31 million, exceeding their number in any of the baby boom years of the 1960s. The fact that many brand loyalties begin during adolescence and last through adulthood makes the group even more important to marketers (Fox).

Budweiser is a quality product -- at least that is what we are told. "At Anheuser-Busch, quality is more than a goal...it is a way of life. Quality doesn't just happen. In the end, quality comes from having the human, technological and financial resources to invest in it each and every business day. An unwavering commitment to quality is at the heart of how Anheuser-Busch has done business since 1852. Then, as now, it is the key to our success and will continue to be in the future." (Anheuser-Busch Companies) Wow, let me pop the top of a twelve ounce can of Budweiser while I reflect on the dirty details of the alcoholic beverage industry's Public Relations Marketing Campaigns. Man, I think they're right, I DO LOVE BEER - I think.

Like most companies that have a product to sell, historically, Anheuser-Busch has always been an organization that has had to advertise heavily. In the 1840's, two mighty beer men toiled and eventually created the powerful and respected Anheuser-Busch brewery. "Eberhard Anheuser had brought out a Bavarian Brewery and with that the stage was set for the entrance of the principal actor in the great drama of beer." (Holland, Gerald) His son-in-law, "Adolphus Busch came to St. Louis equipped with a sound training at the Gymnasium in Mainz. He was the youngest of twenty-one children begotten by Ulrick and Barbara Busch. His arrival was inconspicuous, but he soon made his presence felt." (Holland, Gerald) But from the beginning, competition in the brewing industry has been fierce and at many times violent.

Because in the 1850's large kegs were the only way to get beer products to the numerous saloons for sale, Anheuser-Busch used to have to pay bribes in the forms marketing for their kegs to be accepted as opposed to the competition's brands. To get into new neighborhoods, large-scale advertising had to be conducted in order to win over the locals - and as stated, marketing included payoffs as needed.

Bottling was both a solutions for keg and product delivery as it was an opportunity to expand revenues. Budweiser was not the first bottled beer in the world but it was the first bottled beer that was intended for shipping. "Returning to America, he had the Busch brewery make the beer for him and called it Budweiser after the town of Budweis, where he had discovered. He bottled the new drink in his own small shop." (Holland, Gerald)

In 1855, Budweiser was the best-bottled beer in the country. "While his rivals in St. Louis were struggling with wagon-load orders, he coolly turned his back on the local market, invested deeply in a wardrobe, and set out as a traveling ambassador of beer. He scoured the name, and eventually the world, everywhere preaching the gospel of Budweiser. His work was done magnificently. In a few years, the aid of the United States was predominantly in the hands of Anheuser-Busch." (Holland, Gerald)

Budweiser became the brewery's main product so the company was able to reduce the number of beers from sixteen brands to four -- Michelob, Faust, Budweiser, and the standard pale beer. "Michelob was perhaps the best beer ever made in America and the most expensive; it sold for twenty-five cents a glass. Like Budweiser, it originated in Bohemia, but in this case it was Adolphus himself who found it." (Holland, Gerald)

Today the Anheuser-Busch common stock continues to do well as sales of Budweiser and the other products saturate or economy. As evidenced by the 1983 to Present chart, the public has been convinced that it really does love beer - especially Budweiser.

Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc. is the holding company parent of Anheuser-Busch, Incorporated (ABI). The Company is also the Parent Corporation to a number of subsidiaries. Their operations consist of domestic beer, international beer, packaging, entertainment and other operations like theme parks, real-estate manufacturing, transportation and recycling. The domestic beer segments is comprised of all United States beer manufacturing and wholesale operations while the international beer segment consists of the Company's export sales and overseas beer production and marketing operations.

Financially, Anheuser-Busch is extremely solvent entity. "For the three months ended 3/31/03, net sales rose 5% to $3.28 billion. Net income rose 6% to $484.8 million. Revenues reflect growth in both domestic and international beer sales. Earnings reflect lower brewing material and energy costs, reduced aluminum prices and improved operating margin." (Yahoo Finance)

According to Anheuser-Busch's web site, Anheuser-Busch feels that their public relations marketing premise is a sum of the elements of all of their products and how the public response to each product. They forecast how a concept would succeed by examining their previous product's themes not as a whole of each product but by smaller elements of each product. Those elements consist of knowing the specific effects that each element will have in directing a concept and then building the public relations campaign around the results. They ask questions like does this campaign have the element of emotional strength? By emotional strength they refer to the emotion as a sense of understanding and feeling of the target audience. Emotion is a way of securing the media placements, shaping decision making; generating product awareness, building audience interest, increasing audience response and getting the target audience into thinking that the message was geared specifically for them. This element approach has been extremely successful for Anheuser-Busch.

Public relations marketing campaign should also demonstrate a sound message that the target audience can relate to. The message should be a step above the ordinary and still answer the basic public relations questions of who, what, when and where. The key however, is that the marketing campaign fulfills the 'what action is needed' for the target audience. If one was to view past Budweiser commercials for example, one consistent theme is present -- Anheuser-Busch wants the target audience to do - buy Budweiser. Recently though, Anheuser-Busch's new approach has been to sprinkle in public service announcements to show the community that issues like drunk driving, adolescent consumption and birth defects are on the minds of the executives and that they care. They have gone away from the saturation approach of buy our product. Another successful approach for Anheuser-Busch has always been to use brand-naming tactics that affect the likelihood of corporate ad knowledge. Corporate branding, corporate ad knowledge and brand knowledge is sometimes retained as a single knowledge base. Therefore, corporate ad knowledge influences the brand. Joint branding a corporate name is similar to the brand name.

In 1999, Anheuser-Busch received the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) OBIE Hall of Fame Award for Budweiser, in recognition of more than 100 years of outstanding and innovative outdoor advertising work. "Budweiser is a prime example of the power of outdoor to brand," said Diane Cimine, OAAA executive vice president and chief marketing officer. "As long as there has been Budweiser, there has been fresh and compelling Budweiser outdoor imagery. I think that says it all." (Anheuser-Busch Companies) From its introduction in 1876, Budweiser used advertising, hanging posters on the sides of buildings and public wooden fences. A decade later, they were placing ads on railroad cars for "rolling billboards." And by the turn of the century, 3-sheet posters had become a primary medium for Budweiser campaigns, featuring slogans like "Budweiser...the great leader " and "Budweiser...everywhere." Later, Budweiser was among the first brands to take advantage of electric spectaculars, and used those innovative signs in large markets such as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. "Since 1876, outdoor advertising has played a major role in delivering Budweiser's quality message to our key consumers," said Dan Hoffmann, director of Budweiser marketing. "This award is not only an honor, but serves as a challenge for us to continually develop creative, innovative and unique outdoor advertising into the next century. You can be sure that Budweiser will continue to utilize outdoor advertising's attributes in our marketing plans." (Anheuser-Busch Companies)

What does Anheuser-Busch spend on advertising their products like Budweiser? An example of the type of budget allotted to product marketing can be shown by this year's Super Bowl. Super Bowl XXXVII Advertisers were noted as shelling out an approximately $2.2 million for ads and Anheuser-Busch has been a regular participant in the Super Bowl marketing campaigns. "Viewers will see many of the same advertisers as in the past, including Anheuser-Busch, which continues to be king of commercials with 11 30-second spots for Budweiser, Bud Light and Michelob Ultra." (De Marco) About fourteen percent of American adults were recorded as having watched the Super Bowl just for the ads, according to one 2003 Super Bowl Ad Survey.

Drinking among adolescents is a major problem in our society. "Some survey's found that two-thirds of eighth graders and almost ninety percent of all high school seniors had experimented with alcohol. As disturbing is the fact fourteen percent of the eighth graders and twenty-eight of the high school seniors admitted that they had consumed five or more alcoholic drinks on at least one occasion in the two weeks prior to the survey." (Fox)

The beer industry has recognized the need to communicate to people that, if they drink, they should do so responsibly, and messages to that effect have been included in beer advertising on a voluntary basis. "However, our results indicate that the disclosure used in the Miller Lite ad is less effective at attracting and holding adolescents' attention than currently mandated cigarette warnings, which have not been effective among adolescents." (Fox)

In regard to culture and demographics, alcoholic beverage advertising has moved towards the Internet. But web advertising is tough to control that looks at the ads. "It was noted that early reports indicated a healthy and growing market for Internet ads with online ad revenues at an estimated $80 million in 1996, growing to $4 billion by 2001.

On the other hand, it was noted that pricing frustrated advertisers and reporting based on the old media models. Indeed, the firm predicted that advertising networks -- not ad agencies -- would become the dominant sellers of Web ads. (Steinbock, 255) "In the Budweiser case, online demographics matched up with the brand's target market. But some members of the online audience were below the legal age limit. To control club membership, Budweiser relied on banner advertising and membership limits, but it also limited Tribe B. membership to individuals to 21 and over. Age disclosure was a necessary component of the Tribe B. survey. Any individuals citing their age as younger than 21 were forbidden membership in the affinity club. Still, the Budweiser site had no effective means to confirm the validity of the age disclosure. This problem had little to do with the technology; it was intertwined with issues of free speech and regulation (local, regional, national, international)." (Steinbock)

Therefore social influences in regard to advertising to minors has to be addressed. As the efforts to eliminate tobacco use and alcohol abuse by young people progress, more attention must be paid to the persuasiveness of antismoking and responsible drinking messages. Further, the intrusiveness and communication power of warnings included in product ads must be carefully assessed. Eye tracking can be a useful research method in related investigations among adolescents. (Fox)

Finally, brand managers may find separate branding is most appropriate for products that are highly differentiated from the company's other products and those of competitors. In such situations brand managers do not want consumers' corporate ad knowledge to interfere with carefully crafted brand images. Anheuser-Busch, for example, markets several products in the beer category (Budweiser, Bud Lite, and Busch) that are targeted to different segments with different images. Separate names therefore give brand managers the freedom to communicate distinct positions that are unlikely to be influenced adversely by corporate ad knowledge. Clearly, brand managers may also be inclined to use separate branding when consumers have negative or no corporate ad knowledge." (Biehal and Sheinin)

The perception by the public about alcoholic advertising is mixed. Controversy surrounds the marketing of all alcohol products. Alcohol manufacturers have been accused of advertising in media whose audiences consist largely of underage consumers. "Anheuser-Busch, and subsequently Miller Brewing Company ceased advertising on the MTV network after the FTC launched an investigation into the airing of a Schlitz Malt Liquor commercial during MTV programming targeted to teens. That airing was in direct violation of the beer industry's own marketing code, which states that beer commercials should not be placed in a show whose audience, consists mostly of underage viewers. A sampling of MTV programming revealed numerous violations of the code." (Segal)

The content of beer commercials which tend to portray beer drinkers as young, sexy, successful, and active has been criticized because that image is exactly the one many adolescents strive to project. Also, a survey found that nearly 60% of 5th and 6th graders could identify Spuds McKenzie, and more than 80% could match him with Budweiser beer "(Fox).

If brand managers are running brand advertising with high frequency and also actively seeking corporate ad effects, great care may be necessary to tease out those effects. For example, surveys could be used to measure brand attitude, brand affect, and individual brand beliefs. Then separate regressions could be run with current brand measures as dependent variables and the following three knowledge-related independent variables: (1) prior brand measures, (2) brand ad measures, and (3) corporate ad measures. Such analyses may enable brand managers to determine whether corporate ad knowledge is contributing to brand knowledge and, if so, to what degree." (Biehal and Sheinin)

Young people are particularly susceptible to image-based advertising, which is used extensively in the advertising of alcohol and tobacco products." (Fox)

Alcohol abuse has been well documented as a problem of our society. Drinking and driving is a primary cause of traffic accidents and related fatalities. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) was formed to bring attention to the human toll, including innocent victims, resulting from driving while intoxicated (DWI). Many local governments have instituted stiff penalties for DWI violations in the hope of discouraging drinking and driving. The problems associated with that form of alcohol abuse are not restricted to adults. Teenagers are involved in the most automobile crashes and fatalities, with drinking and driving being a primary cause. In fact, alcohol use is involved in half of those automobile accidents, as well as approximately one third of all homicides and suicides among teens. The public is demanding enforcement of the drinking age laws and considerable punishment for distributors who allow teenagers to obtain alcoholic beverages. Federal and local governments have been pushing for harsher penalties for teens that drink and drive.

Additional concerns have been raised about other forms of media like the print media. "Thirty percent of the readers of Spin magazine are under the age of 18, and almost one half is under 21. Yet, that magazine and others with large teen readership such as Allure, Vibe, and Rolling Stone are filled with liquor ads despite insistence by industry spokespeople that they target consumers 21 to 35 years of age." (Segal)

In response, alcohol manufacturers have included cautionary statements in print advertising to encourage responsible use of alcohol. Unlike warnings appearing on alcohol beverage containers, which are mandatory, the cautionary statements included in advertising are voluntary. Further, some beer commercials include a moderation message, such as Budweiser's "know when to say when" slogan. Beer companies have also sponsored TV segments that promote responsible drinking with slogans such as "friends don't let friends drive drunk."