By Bella Michaels
You’re sitting on your couch, munching on the chips and salsa on the table in front of you. Your friend is passing you an ice-cold beer. It’s Super Bowl Sunday and you’re waiting to see which commercial will amuse you most. But have you thought about why brands do what they do and how they do it?
For the seventh year, Andy Clark‘s Sports Sponsorship Marketing classes got down to the why and the how. Clark is the director of sports business programs at DePaul University.
Joe Lennon, the senior director at Bud Light/Anheuser-Busch, is a client of FCB — one of the world’s largest advertising, marketing and promotional agencies.
Lennon, alongside the FCB team, dove deep into both perspectives of creating a successful Super Bowl spot on Wednesday evening in Clark’s class.
“We wanted to write a love letter to our biggest fans and make them feel proud to be a Bud Light fan,” Lennon said. “So, the intention behind it was to galvanize the Bud Light loyalists, people who got Bud Light tattoos on their arm.”
So as a treat to their brand lovers and characters they love, Bud Light decided to treat their characters like superheroes in its spot in this year’s Super Bowl.
“That’s where we got this idea of Bud Light Legends,” Lennon said. “All of these characters from the past and present that a lot of our fans love and kind of treat them like the superheroes of fun that they are. That’s how we got to our spot.”
But this wouldn’t be a 2021 article if I didn’t mention that COVID-19 managed to make the production process challenging for both the Bud Light and Bud Light Seltzer spots.
“Normally, I’m used to being on set for those, but we were all via Zoom,” Lennon said. “Just the director and a small crew were on set, trying to limit as much as we can. I think production capabilities have caught up a lot. We were able to watch the camera from Zoom from my place in New York, even though the shoot was in LA. We had daily coronavirus tests for everybody who came on set.”
Creating ads like this doesn’t just happen after thinking of an idea. There’s a lot of strategic planning and data that goes into it before anyone steps foot on a production set. Lennon had to ask himself: Who is drinking light beer?
“It’s the loyalists. It’s the 35-year-old, 40-year-old, 45-year-old – mostly guys – that have drank a lot Bud Light over the years. For seltzer it was like ‘let’s use seltzer to talk to the 25-year-olds and people who aren’t drinking beer.’”
This is where an ad agency would come into the picture.
The class got to hear from three key areas of FCB’s business. Howard Klein, the senior vice president and group management director at FCB, manages Anheuser-Busch business and Barilla pasta. His colleague, Chris Hibi, is in charge of strategic planning.
Hibi looks into data and insights to build a strong brief and works closely with Lisa Bright, the executive creative director, to produce a legacy-making idea.
Brand is important. Here’s why:
“Data would suggest that the portion of our brain that’s used to cognitively and deliberately think through decision making actually takes a far back seat to the back part of our brain that’s much more instantaneous,” Hibi said. “There’s data out there that suggests that part of our brain is much more powerful, and brand is a way to help instill and insert those ideas.”
While using celebrities in ads to attract consumers is helpful, it’s not the first or most important element Lennon looks at when he sets a plan. His three main goals are to have a clear intention, be true to your tone and make it more than an ad. So really know what you are trying to achieve before you brief.
Bright went on to emphasize that FCB doesn’t create finished ideas. It creates ideas that drive business short-term but builds brands over time. The goal is to create ideas that “flex to fit different cultures, different audiences and different platforms.”
Next time you watch an ad, think about everything that went into creating it and why it was created.
Originally published on Bella Michaels’s blog.