Budweiser ties search to its music history through OOH displays

Dive Brief:

Budweiser is taking consumers on a trip through its music history with a campaign that combines out-of-home displays with online search, according to news provided to Marketing Dive.
The effort, created with the ad agency Africa, features simple displays of white text on a red background. Each includes Google search terms and the phrase "Search it," which urge passersby to access photos showing Budweiser's presence in music throughout the decades.
For example, the search terms "1969, musicians, sessions, Budweiser" turns up a 1969 image of the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Keith Richards holding cans of Budweiser. The terms "1987, California, hip-hop, Budweiser" find photos of the Beastie Boys' Adam Horovitz on stage spraying the crowd with a can of the beer.

Dive Insight:

Budweiser is tying together online and offline marketing channels with its latest out-of-home (OOH) effort, and largely eschewing mobile tools like QR codes to instead make use of existing search terms. Interactive billboards and displays are a trend that more marketers are embracing to reach consumers at key moments. Absolut's recent "Global Selfie" campaign asked people to upload photos of themselves to be shared on digital displays in airports, for example.

OOH advertising revenue rose 2% in Q1 2018 compared to the same period last year, and accounted for $1.68 billion, according to new data from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA).

"An important part of OOH's growth has been advertisers in the tech and digital sectors because of its ability to efficiently reach massive audiences," said OAAA President and CEO Nancy Fletcher in a statement. "Our resonance with this sector is only expanding."

Budweiser has continued to lean heavily into music partnerships in its marketing, especially through its Made for Music platform focused on live events. However, certain aspects of that strategy are changing as the brewer and parent company AB-InBev struggle to drive sales. Budweiser this week confirmed to Ad Age that it is pulling out of the Made In America music fest, which it has been a lead sponsor of for the past several years.

AB-InBev still spends more than other companies on sponsorships for music tours, festivals and venues, making up 51% of the $1.54 billion spent on them by marketers in North America last year, according to ESP-IEG data cited by Ad Age. Recent Budweiser campaigns have focused more on country music in the U.S. and global music abroad.