Bud Light is America’s favorite light beer with a longstanding relationship and association with pro sports. Due to the Pandemic, consumers were forced to stay at home, sporting events were put on hold and bars and restaurants were closed. This shutdown resulted in lost revenue and lost opportunities to connect with beer drinkers, especially in-stadium and in on-premise accounts. How could Bud Light reignite sales during such an unusual year and connect with sports fans who were forced to shelter in place?

With sports leagues gearing up to return to play, without fans in stadiums, it was paramount for Bud Light to make consumers aware they could still have beer delivered to their “seat” only now it was through e-commerce. Our campaign objectives focused on driving e-commerce adoption: increasing traffic to the BudLight.com/Delivery tool, driving click-outs to alcohol delivery retailers and driving incremental volume of Bud Light via e-commerce sales.

Without fans in stands, the iconic beer vendor was silenced and couldn’t do what he does best – deliver beer to ago to the game, it didn’t mean the experience of getting beer delivered to their “seats” couldn’t be brought to them at home. So we brought the beloved vendor to their neighborhood, bellowing out his recognizable call to thirsty sports fans stuck at home. Not only did the iconic beer vendor call provide fans an element of the in-stadium experience they were missing, but it also introduced fans to the BudLight.com/Delivery e-commerce portal. Using this portal, consumers could order Bud Light and have it delivered from the closest retailer without missing a single play, reinforcing that watching sports isn’t the same without drinking an ice-cold Bud Light.

Our audience was intentionally broad: all sports fans 21+ that were missing the in-game experience of drinking beer. Sports fans have been a foundational segment of Bud Light’s business for decades, and drinking beer is one of the most cherished experiences of the sports-watching occasion. We needed to create a 360 campaign that would reach this audience wherever and however they were tuning into the game, including tapping into the increasingly popular second-screen viewing behaviors adopted by sports fans.

Through social listening, we uncovered a powerful insight: sports fans were missing the in-stadium experience of getting a cold beer delivered right to their seat from the beloved beer vendor.

Our goal was to communicate to fans that they could still get Bud Light delivered right to them, just like at the game, if they used BudLight.com/Delivery- and who better to deliver this message to fans than the beloved beer vendor?

The Bud Light Beer Vendor e-commerce campaign was introduced to fans on broadcast and live-streaming platforms with the return of the MLB. Included in the buy were placements targeted to appear at specific game moments, like the 7th inning stretch. Our TVCs continued to air across various the NHL, NBA and MLS games, including double-box units that showed our vendor next to the in-game action. We also utilized radio spots during sports programming to reach our audience

Due to the popularity of second-screen viewing, we created a range of social/digital executions that ran across YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Executions consisted of targeted ads, posts on owned and wholesaler channels, in-stream/in-feed ads, bumper ads, Trueview/skippable ads, and organic video. We also incorporated localization tactics to boost relevancy of our social efforts. Utilizing a strong digital retargeting strategy, we personalized ads for fans of major teams around game times.

Our ecommerce-driving campaign not only successfully connected with sports fans, bringing them a part of the in-stadium experience we knew they were missing, but it also had undeniable success on the e-commerce KPI objectives we set out to achieve.

Traffic to BudLight.com/Delivery skyrocketed with 222k average visits a month and 1.22 Million total visits as of December 2020, and retailer click-outs from BudLight.com/Delivery more than doubled to an average click-out rate of 6.5% after launch.

Our campaign also contributed to a substantial 209% lift in their e-commerce sales (July 2020 versus July 2019). While Bud Light saw a 175% ecommerce sales lift in 2020 versus 2019, specifically in July 2020 once our campaign launched, Bud Light saw a 209% sales lift. We drove consistently high e-commerce sales in the summer months despite slowing alcohol delivery momentum, likely due to warmer weather, rising comfort levels and bars/ restaurants opening back up.