Bud Light's Whatever, USA

I'm sure at this point almost everyone has seen some sort of advertisement or promotion for Bud Light's "town" called Whatever, USA. Although it may be a break from my usual observations about packaging redesigns and the social media marketing that goes along with it, I felt this was easily one of the biggest promotions over the last year for practically any beverage company in the United States and I would be in the wrong not to discuss it.

The basic idea behind the promotion is that Bud Light decided to make its own temporary town and throw a huge, multi-day, random party there. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that, but that's the general concept. Getting all this to happen was an entirely different story. It started with a TV ad promoting what I just described many months ago. The ad ended with the slogan "Are you up for Whatever?", a clever play on words. Eventually the slogan was shortened to become the Twitter tag #UpForWhatever. Bud Light's Twitter page then started posting all kinds of promotional material online that included this tag, along with a link to the company website where the event was described in more detail.

Another thing Bud Light did a great job of with this promotion was making it interactive for consumers. The YouTube page that was created specifically for this event played a huge part in this. In addition to advertisements and other clever videos, fans had to submit videos in which they discussed why they would be a good candidate to make the trip to Whatever. Once the candidates were chosen, Bud Light flew them out to a small town in Colorado that had been set up to be Whatever, USA. All the random (but planned) events that took place in Whatever were filmed and then made into a lengthy video showing all the shenanigans and fun that was had over the course of the several days the town existed. Photos were shared and posted on the Facebook page and the website had some minor redesigns so people could more easily view content from the event.

Although there aren't any numbers out quite yet that could make it so I could definitely say the promotion was a success, based on the amount of participation and effort that went into Whatever, I would be surprised if it wasn't very successful. Combine that with several more promotional events at things like music festivals, and it makes you realize how big this promotion was and how many platforms it covered.