Q] Budweiser is a known brand in the alco-bev category. What is the current objective of your marketing strategy?
As a commercially-driven organization, we are already the leaders in the premium segment, but we want to be the leaders in the beer segment as well. Our main objective is to grow the category, as right now beer penetration in India is still very low compared to a lot of countries across the globe. We want to make sure that in India, not only from a consumer perspective but even from a government or trade perspective, beer is seen in a different light. That’s what a lot of our activities do. But we have standard metrics of volume, market share, revenue, and brand health, we measure a lot of these.
Q] So, what is the approach that Budweiser takes for marketing?
Know your brand, and know your consumers. Those are the two common mantras, whether you’re making a Super Bowl ad or you’re making an Instagram creative. You need to know what tone works for you as a brand, your brand ethos, what you should and should not talk about, and the issues that are relevant to your audience. So, having awareness about your brand is extremely important. At the same time, knowing your consumers is also important. A consumer in the US and a consumer in India will have different life stages. When we talk about out ‘Made Over Nights’ campaign, it celebrates the determination and hard work it takes, like how our beer takes a lot of time to get made. Understanding pop culture is also important, for example, we worked with Siddhant Chaturvedi and spotlighted his journey through our product.
Q] What is the objective of Budweiser’s association with the Indian music scene?
There are three things we are very passionate about - beer, music, and our consumers. Music Festivals are a perfect combination of these three. We’ve been doing this for quite some time. It’s been over 15 years for us here in India, but as a 150-year-old global brand, music is our main passion point that we are focused on, and invested in. We don’t just work with festivals as sponsors who put their logo, we are building and shaping the music scene in India. We work with artists and event partners who build amazing experiences for our consumers. Some of the world’s biggest festivals that are in India today were brought here by us – Electric Daisy Carnival in 2016, Sensation, DGTL, Boiler Room, Mixmag, Echoes of Earth, which is a homegrown festival, and one of our biggest partnerships is with Lollapalooza. The music community is growing, and sometimes strategy can be very boring, but we want to make sure that we do this consistently and increase the scale year after year.
Q] Please share a few insights on the process of collaboration with festivals and how you choose which event or IP to collaborate with.
Wish we could do it all, but we have to make choices. It starts with knowing your brand. Our brand is built on international heritage, and the three keywords that resonate with the brand are freedom, authenticity, and ambition. Our consumers in India have these three values, and we look for these values in the connections we make to build these consumer touchpoints. We’re looking for authenticity and for people who want to build on this. We are long-term partners and are not here to do a single one-year deal. Budweiser has stayed consistent in collaboration with artists not only when they played in festivals, but even when they were playing in small bars too.
As a company, we always analyse what is working and what is not, and which metrics are helping us to move the needle. Our standard metrics are commercial, brand health, and growing the ‘beer’ category. These are the top macro-initiatives that we look into to evaluate whether we are moving the needle on these KPIs.
We are a big supporter of creating IPs. BUDX is our iconic flagship property across the globe, where we’re giving opportunities to local artists to come and take the stage. We also look at things such as footfalls, trials, brand attributes, internationalism, and the kind of experience that people have. Spot research is something that we do in order to understand how consumers like it. Keeping a good balance is key, but yes, we are a hardcore commercial organisation. If it’s working, then we’ll continue in scale, if not, then we move out of that.
Q] What is the brand’s media plan?
First and foremost, we respect the law of the land. We will never target people below the legal drinking age, and we also have it in our company code of responsible marketing communication. Even the people we showcase in our ads should not be and will not be below the legal drinking age. There are global agencies we work with on our media plan, and we keep a sharp eye on the legal aspect of it. Secondly, we don’t directly target alcohol, we have a 0.0 percentage alcohol product. Additionally, there are a lot of other non-alcoholic properties that we use to target or at least share our message with people. We are not openly promoting the consumption of alcohol. We follow whatever the law dictates whether it’s on Google, Facebook, Instagram, OTT, or even our offline media and outdoor hoardings, or our takeovers in airports.
Q] How do you measure brand or growth metrics that are not directly traceable or attributable?
We come back to the hard facts – revenue growth, brand health, and market share. We work with partners to understand our awareness of the brand and the penetration of a brand. Are people considering us in their future purchases, even if they’re not buying today? There are so many brands across the globe, but is our brand differentiated? Does our brand even come into the minds of the consumers when they’re thinking, ‘Let’s have beer?’ So, that’s the saliency aspect, that is the saliency increasing.
Right now, there is no traceability, unlike many other categories where you can close the loop. I’m not selling online, I don’t know whether that person saw my ad and immediately went to buy the product. We are trying certain experiments in different markets of India, for example, we give out certain codes and check whether people are going and redeeming them. This is done alongside limited-time offers. These experiments are nascent at this point. I can’t sell alcohol online, but I can push people to certain places where they can buy alcohol.
