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You’ve probably seen one of these recent Bud Light commercials from their new “Drinkability” campaign. I’m still wondering what the hell “drinkability” even is….sounds like another made-up ad agency phrase, like “brand immersion” or “holistic ideation”.

So while the ad agency is worried about coining phrases like “drinkability”, we’re off worrying about “measurability”. The agency will argue that these types of phrases “resonate through to the consumer” and that it creates “brand recognition” – all true points. But how do you measure the impact of this campaign, and was it the messaging that drove more sales, or the fact that you bought more reach and frequency in your media buy? There is a direct correlation between buying X more dollars of media will result in Y more dollars of sales, but at some point, it levels out and you end up spending more to get nothing. Do you know where this point is?

What if you turned off the advertising for a while? What was the impact?

We had a discussion today about the disparity between brand promise and consumer experience. How does Bud Light measure that? Ideally, you would like for everything you say in your marketing and advertising to live up to your customer’s every expectation. What happens if it doesn’t? How is social media going to affect my brand if I can’t deliver on my “drinkability” promise?

Well, I’m sure that Bud Light and their agency have it all figured out. In fact, I’m going to pick up some Bud Light right now!

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2 Responses

  1. Eric Braun
    February 4th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    Not to get all beer geeky on you, but “drinkability” is essentially saying “how many of these can you drink before you wear out your taste buds.” So a beer that’s very hoppy or malty you just aren’t going to drink a lot of. Sort of like a rich food.

    Bud Light doesn’t have a lot of either of those characteristics so it’s got a lot of drinkability, if not much in the character department. If you look at a site like BeerAdvocate.com the reviewerss there site drinkability often. Sometimes it’s referred to as a “session” beer meaning you can put back quite a few in a drinking session.

    So, from a branding perspective this is more of Bud Light’s agency co-opting a term that does apply to their product and making hay with it. Pretty effective ad, I think.

    Social media is pretty fickle. The masses are only going to pass it around if it resonates through humor, a new idea or titillation. I think the actual brand promise is secondary to those factors.

  2. twitter.com/voxaeterno
    February 8th, 2009 at 6:40 pm

    Great post. Reminds me so much of the principles behind Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae.
    -Davis

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