Bud House World Cup 2010 Campaign

Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Budweiser set out to leverage Budweiser's official beer sponsorship of the 2010 FIFA World CupTM by creating an integrated campaign that engaged and empowered consumers with their number one passion point - football.

The Budweiser United brand platform, activated in over 80 countries, was designed to bring consumers closer to the game they love and demonstrate in a truly unique way that Budweiser, like football, can unite people together.

The campaign celebrated the spirit of camaraderie, celebration and optimism inherent to both World Cup football and Budweiser. Key components included:

• BUD HOUSE: Hosted at www.BudUnited.com, this groundbreaking online reality series brought together 32 passionate football fans, one from each of the World Cup qualifying countries. The fans travelled to Cape Town and lived together in BUD HOUSE for the duration of the tournament, hoping for the chance to win the ultimate prize—presenting the Budweiser Man Of The Match trophy to the winning player at the finals. By breaking out of the boundaries of television, the series offered a unique and unprecedented interactive user experience and a global reach like no other reality show in history.
• Budweiser Man of the Match: For the first time in World Cup history, consumers were allowed to select the official Man of the Match by voting online (FIFA.com) or via SMS text for each of the 64 World Cup matches.
• Budweiser Paint Your Face Facebook Application: Allowed consumers to demonstrate and share their love for their country by virtually painting their face with their country’s flag/colors and make the new image their Facebook profile picture.
• Budweiser United: Television, print, outdoor and in-stadium signage created awareness of the Bud United platform and drove people to BudUnited.com.

The unprecedented merger of reality TV, multiple digital platforms, consumer engagement, branded entertainment and sponsorship activation on a global scale made this campaign an enormous success.

And the near real-time topical nature of production with highly compelling content demonstrated the fun, excitement, celebration and multi-national camaraderie that can happen when people are united by their shared passion and humanity.

The Bud United FIFA World Cup platform, along with a range of other global initiatives, is credited by ABI in helping the brand’s global sales trend.

• Bud United garnered over 1.4 billion impressions and over 19 million consumer engagements, far exceeding planned goals on both measures.
• Bud House earned over 4.2 million channel views in five weeks and was the #1 most viewed branded YouTube channel several days during the World Cup.
• Additionally, Bud House registered over 7 million views on syndicated channels across the globe.
• Over the five weeks of the World Cup, Bud United became the #1 beer Facebook page in the world, earning 1 million fans - more than double the fans of next biggest beer Facebook page.
• The Facebook Budweiser Paint Your Face application generated 200 million social media impressions in 5 weeks. 2.7 million faces were painted and those personalized Budweiser branded billboards were shared directly with an estimated 200 million friends in Facebook.
• Six out of 10 people drank Budweiser in the World Cup stadium. Sales of Budweiser outpaced bottled water, sports and soft drinks combined.
• In the first two weeks of the games (and the Bud United platform) Budweiser garnered a 4.9% share of the online conversation compared to its rival Carlsberg’s 2.4% share. In the first two weeks, Budweiser also had the fifth-highest share of online World Cup buzz.