Hey World - This Bud's For You
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by user 74.129.108.161
The World Cup is not only the world's biggest sporting event but it also the largest consumer marketing extravaganza in history. With a global audience estimated at a cumulative 32 billion viewers, the 2006 World Cup could be the largest marketing opportunity ever presented. As such, FIFA has attracted as sponsor partners multinational companies that are household brand names, such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Yahoo!, Mastercard and Budweiser.
It is Budweiser that presents an interesting case study. Bud will be the only branded beer available in World Cup stadiums. Now, in a country for whom beer is the national drink and in which there are 1,270 breweries, you might think that serving Bud would not be well received. You would be correct. In fact, prior to the World Cup, Anheuser-Busch was not even allowed to sell Budweiser under that name in Germany as it is too similar to the local Bitburger brand, which will be the only other brand sold in World Cup venues, albeit in unmarked cups. That was the deal Anheuser-Busch had to cut to get the Bud brand into the stadiums.
The German press and people are not too fond of Budweiser, with good reason. They are furious that it is the almost the only beer available in the stadium and are going out of their way to denigrate the beer and the company. In fact, one English newspaper was quoted as reporting that Budweiser is: "brown-gold and alcoholic-but then, in the scathing verdict of German beer fans, so it paint thinner." That was one of the kinder comments.
Despite the local reaction, it is not the German market that Anheueser-Busch is really attempting to convert. By being the exclusive beer presence in the stadium, the company hopes to introduce the Bud brand to new consumers around the world. The World Cup provides a unique opportunity to provide taste tests of your brand to consumers from the world over for a solid month.
In addition, stadium signage will be seen by that audience of 32 billion. For a company whose sales outside the US are still less than 20% of its total sales, the global stage of the World Cup opportunity outweighs the negatives from the bad press it will receive from the Germans. Is it a risk? Sure, but all new ventures are risky and if Bud is ever to expand greatly beyond the US it will have to overcome the perception that it the Germans will attempt to foster during the World Cup. What better way to overcome it than by providing the product to soccer fans from throughout the world.
Date
Thu 06/15/06, 5:10 pm EST
