Budweiser ‘Whassup’ Advertising Campaign

Budweiser is an American beer brand and one of the best-selling beers in U.S. Budweiser’s “Whassup” is another successful and hugely popular marketing campaign. The campaign quickly became popular among the younger lot after it was launched, and won several awards.

Beer brands have always used humour in their advertising campaigns, so this campaign was no different in that sense. But what was different in this case was that Budweiser managed to make the campaign a success using just a single word – Whassup!

The Whassup campaign resonated with the more youthful audience, which was the target segment for this campaign. Young alcohol drinkers (age 21 to 27) generally do not have preference towards any particular brand; they take time to form brand loyalties. This campaign allowed Budweiser to forge a connection with young beer drinkers and make a good first (early) impression. This segment also happens to be the biggest consumer of beer, so even more reason why Budweiser wanted to create the right kind of impact on this segment.

Here are some of the reasons why the campaign was so effective.

• The campaign was about camaraderie, friendship, and almost every guy could relate to it. The ads portrayed genuine friendship.

  So, this advertising campaign basically made the right kind of impact for its target market.

• As in the case of Nike, you can see the simplicity of the slogan. It’s so easy to remember, it uses just one word.
• The various commercials made the slogan even more infectious. The more people hear it, the more likely they are to use the word.

  The slogan became the coolest greeting for the 20-plus males. And within no time, “Whassup”’ became part of the pop-culture vocabulary. While the older generation didn’t enjoy the commercials much (it was not intended for them anyways), the word became extremely popular. Even grandmas were saying “Whassup” when they would meet their grand kids.

• All the “Whassup” commercials were hilarious; they had a fun element, which played an important part in the popularity of these commercials.

The famous ad campaign was first broadcast in the year 1999. And after the original commercial became widely popular, the campaign was later developed into more expansive campaigns, in which the tagline from the original commercials was interpreted in new ways.

The advertising campaign grabbed the attention of its target market, though it did not resonate well with the older Budweiser drinkers (but that was never the intention in the first place).