A decision by Budweiser to not run a Super Bowl ad for the first time in 37 years gave the beer brand a more effective campaign than spending $US5.5 million on a 30 second big game spot, according to analysts.
The beer brand this year redirected advertising dollars to support COVID-19 vaccines awareness and education.
Analysis by programmatic video marketplace Unruly shows Budweiser’s decision was more effective than any big game campaign of the last five years.
Unruly used content testing tool UnrulyEQ to measure the impact of Super Bowl LV campaigns, including how much emotional engagement they generate and the impact they have on brand metrics.
Budweiser, while withdrawing from the Super Bowl, created an ad to announce its lack of participation.
Voiced by actress Rashida Jones and created by ad agency David Miami, “Bigger Picture” features footage of Americans finding joyful moments despite the pandemic.
The ad, tested on a nationally representative sample of US consumers, achieved an EQ score of 8/10 -- higher than any Super Bowl ad has managed since Unruly’s Super Bowl rankings were first launched back in 2016 and knocking Microsoft’s 2019 campaign. “We All Win” (7.5), off top spot.
“By leveraging the Super Bowl to highlight how it’s helping with such an important and highly-visible societal issue, Budweiser’s ‘Bigger Picture’ generated the brand’s highest-ever favourability, emotional responses and purchase intent scores,” says Rebecca Waring, Unruly’s Global VP, Insight.
“The only area where the ad falls down is brand recall. Generic footage, no matter how emotive, is tricky to tie back to the brand – and consumers have seen a lot of similar ads in 2020."
The ad scored highly after generating an intense emotional response from 58% of viewers – almost twice the US average (32%) and overtaking 2014’s Puppy Love (55%) as the most emotionally engaging recent Super Bowl campaign from Budweiser.
The campaign almost three times as likely to make people happy as the US average. It’s also three times as sad and almost three times as inspiring as the US norm.
Such a strong emotional response to the content and message also had an impact on consumers’ views of the company, with 70% saying they had a better impression of the brand after watching – 79% higher than the average US ad.
A large majority of viewers felt the brand came across as relatable (76%), genuine (82%) and trustworthy (77%).
Almost two-thirds (63%) were also likely to buy the product, way above the average purchase intent percentage of 40%, while the number of people wanting to find out more about the campaign (65%) was also well above the US average of 40%.
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