Anheuser-Busch, founded in 1852, built a legacy with its world-renowned portfolio of beers. Proven to withstand the test of time, Anheuser-Busch looked to be a leader in the next phase of the business by embracing the e-commerce landscape. They came to us to help them drive awareness around buying beer online and develop a full-funnel strategy that embedded beer into peak sales season, followed by lower-funnel content that encourages participation through e-commerce beer sales. We used Cyber Monday, the biggest e-commerce opportunity in the nation, to create the CyBeer Campaign.

Our idea was to spread awareness for “CyBEER Shopping” with direct, convenience-focused messaging centered around one idea: What if beer was just one click away? Utilizing this theme allowed us to create an ownable moment for ABI, encompassing a portfolio of their products. We imagined the Cybeersphere - a 3D-rendered, virtual space, combining the nostalgic appeal of the Digital Revolution with modern digital craft. Once inside, users were prompted to play new rendition of the classic game Pong, choosing their player from a carousel of Anheuser-Busch products, thus creating digital Beer Pong. Users competed against an AI opponent, with the option to play multiple rounds or purchase product for delivery or pickup. Players could track their scores on a national leaderboard throughout the campaign, allowing us to stand out in an endless sea of limited-time promos by giving consumers an organic reason to return.

Our strategy was simple: give users a fun and easy virtual experience to illustrate how fun and easy buying beer online could be. Unlike most brands during Cyber Monday, we wanted to steer away from "deals" messaging. Instead, we wanted to create an experience that gave consumers relief from the onslaught of sales & promos, and make something genuinely entertaining during the Cyber month period. We used targeted ad placements on paid social and digital mediums to invite consumers into the Cybeershpere - a virtual world of beer where users could escape to a classic game of pong, and order beer. In order to enable e-commerce beer sales, we partnered with online retailers to give consumers the ability to purchase beer for pick up or delivery at locations across the country.

We kicked off this project late September 2020, giving our team roughly one month to strategize, conceptualize, build, and launch the assets for this campaign. With so little time, we knew we had to create something simple enough to execute but unique enough to organically spread across the country. The first step was to create the Cyber world where the Beer Pong experience lived. We gave the Cybeersphere its own unique look to keep it relevant, attention-grabbing, and cohesive for all of Anheuser-Busch's brands. The CyBeer Pong game was created as the hero asset within the Cybeersphere campaign, with accompanying social advertising to drive users to the experience.

The Cybeer Pong game creative performed at double Anheuser-Busch benchmarks CTR. User engagement with the Cybeer campaign beat out standard Anheuser-Busch media benchmarks for multi-retailer campaigns by 17%. Both single and multi-retailer creative drove traffic to retail partners at higher rates that beat out standard benchmarks. At Anheuser-Busch, Cyber Monday is now officially Cybeer Month — proving that we were able to tap into something bigger, and that online beer is here to stay.