Boozin’ Blog

Did you see the big ad buyout of Saturday Night Live this week? Anheuser-Busch Inbev bought up all of the national advertising on SNL to push their new Bud Light Golden Wheat.

The ads ranged from the standard look-at-this-lovely-glass-of-beer-now-go-buy-one tactic to little ad-skits that implied Bud Light Golden Wheat is the result of a giant bottle of Bud Light banging a shock of wheat in an elevator.

But the placement was most clever. The Tivo/DVD world of TV with which advertisers have been struggling with for years has left many stymied. Even something as allegedly funny as a bottle of beer boinking lady wheat isn’t going to keep most viewers from punching the skip ahead button. So, ABI did a smart thing. At each ad break they played one very short commercial for their new beer. Then they used the rest of the national ad air time to pull dress rehearsal blooper-type moments from SNL’s history. After the second ad most of us realized that the BLGW ad was too short to skip over and, being SNL fans, we just watched the ad then enjoyed the comedy.

So, where many of us never see an ad on TV anymore, we ended up watching half a dozen or so Bud Light Golden Wheat ads. Very clever, marketing folks.

But, like so many ABI products we wind up talking about the marketing and forgetting about the beer itself. Is it good? Is it interesting or creative? Not really. There’s nothing really wrong with it but its not that great either. If it weren’t for the marketing juggernaut put behind it, most of us who have tried it would forget about it completely.

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