Dive Brief:
- Busch Light will host an outdoor co-working space called TreeWork in the woodlands of Northern Colorado, per details emailed to Marketing Dive.
- TreeWork features a "sleek and well-ventilated" office space, Wi-Fi, Busch Light happy hours, grilling, campfires and the opportunity to camp outside. Fans can reserve a one- or two-day spot from Oct. 4-8 beginning today (Sept. 22) at noon by visiting busch.com/treework.
- TreeWork — a pun on co-working provider WeWork — comes as many workers still have not returned to the office as the delta variant continues to upend plans for a full return to pre-pandemic activities.
Dive Insight:
Busch Light's latest experiential activation — the WeWork-parodying TreeWork — is a lighthearted way for the brand to engage with consumers who are still working remotely by providing a shared space that is truly remote: an undisclosed location in the Northern Colorado woodlands.
The Anheuser-Busch-owned brand has positioned itself as the beer of the great outdoors, and shared research conducted by OnePoll suggests 29 minutes spent outdoors results in a 45% increase in productivity. Along with productivity, Busch seeks to help relieve some of the stress and fatigue that is associated with the pandemic, which has disrupted daily life for more than 18 months.
"As the beer brewed for the great outdoors, we knew we had a chance to step in and create a co-working space that leverages the beauty of nature to help alleviate some of the stress and fatigue that have been impacting all of us," Daniel Blake, group VP for Budweiser & Value at Anheuser-Busch, said in a statement.
Busch has relied on experiential activations and social media sweepstakes for years, and revived the tactic in March by giving three couples a chance to get married outside at a picturesque farm that grows grains used to make its beer. As with TreeWork, that activation spun a pandemic-spurred disruption into an opportunity for the brand to provide value to a select group of fans with a stunt that could go viral on social media.
Anheuser-Busch this month announced a shuffle of its U.S. leadership team. The company named Benoit Garbe, currently Anheuser-Busch's U.S. chief strategy officer, to the U.S. CMO role as part of its efforts to bolster its consumer-first strategy.
