‘We were shocked’, Budweiser’s Todd Allen on last-minute FIFA ban on alcohol at Qatar World Cup stadium

AB InBev, the brewing giant, has accumulated top honours. It was named Creative Marketer of the Year at both 2022 and the upcoming 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It was crowned Most Effective Marketer in the Global Effie Index in 2022 and occupied first place in WARC’s Creative 100 and Effective 100 in 2022.

What fab past few months has it been for the company that owns brand Budweiser which, in its own right, has been visible, live and alive at key marquee properties from FIFA WC to Super Bowl. But it hasn’t been all smooth for the brand.

FIFA World Cup 2022, the brand’s biggest investment for the year, is where they faced their biggest challenge. Qatar officials banned alcohol sales at 8 stadiums just two days before the first match.

For 36 years, spanning nine World Cups, Budweiser has been the official beer sponsor of the biggest footballing event in the world. But a last-minute ruling forbidding the sale of alcohol in or around the stadiums threatened to derail the brand’s best-laid plans.

What did they do and how did they respond? Todd Allen, Vice President of Global Marketing, Budweiser, in a first speaks to CNBC-TV18 exclusively for the first time post the event.

A: We are very much humbled that for the first time the company has been recognized as Creative Marketer of the Year two times in a row at Cannes. We set out with a journey in 2015 that we will really focus towards the journey of driving organic growth globally and we are going to do that by winning through our portfolio of brands and really building powerful brands. And we said to ourselves we have to become much better at creativity and creative effectiveness.

We set a mission in our marketing leadership conference that we want to go out and be the best at creative effectiveness and it is amazing to see that we have accomplished that, and we are really using creativity to solve real consumer problems and business problems for the company to drive topline growth.

And it has been a portfolio play across all of our brands, but Budweiser did well. We won 8 Lions last year across multiple countries. With Bud WhatsApp Records across Columbia, we had the ‘Unbreakable Courts Program’ with the NBA. In Brazil, we had a global programme with Budweiser Energy Collective. Yes, I am very proud and humbled and looking forward to this year’s competition.

A: Having a clear positioning. We want to inspire people to do big things in life — to seize opportunity, go out and chase greatness and staying true to that proposition and bringing that to life through our platforms.

So music is a huge platform for us globally. We are doing great work here in India. We just had our first ever Lollapalluza which Budweiser was a big part of, creating great experiences, staying relevant in culture and the music space and then also building experiences around the passion point of football.

We just concluded the FIFA Football World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world. Of course, we were trying to be at the intersection of people, brands and beer. And being relevant in culture and giving people experiences that they can’t forget.

A: I will be honest, we were shocked! It was a surprise. Four years of planning, we had made this the biggest global campaign ever for Budweiser and two days before, getting a call from FIFA that beer is going to be banned from the concourses at the stadium, we were surprised.

But to be honest, it was a testament to our culture. We were a partner for FIFA over 35 years; beer in international football and the World Cup has become synonymous.

We said to ourselves “What can we still do to deliver that celebration of Budweiser and football for the tournament. So, we rallied our internal team with some of our external partners — Wieden+Kennedy which is our lead agency and the first thing that we did was put out a tweet ‘This is Awkward’. Well, it was awkward, it was awkward for us and awkward for our fans.

A: We had our real-time social media team. We had our newsroom set up so we were ready for whatever was going to happen. The tone of voice was authentic as we could put it out there. It was authentic. It was awkward indeed. So, we quickly rallied in and launched the new campaign which was ‘Bring Home The Bud’ which said essentially the winning country is not only going to bring in the World Cup trophy, but they are also going to bring home all the Budweiser for the ultimate victory celebration. And that became a huge campaign on its own.

A: We were the most talked about brand at the World Cup. We had 70% share of all the social mentions. We started dropping containers of Budweiser around the world. We had 11 countries participating overnight, containers dropping, teasing the celebration and the beer to bring home. Influencers and celebrities that we engaged with for ‘Bring Home the Bud’ messaging. It was a great collaborative effort, and the agility of the company was amazing.

A: Budweiser Zero did very well. Because it was available in the stadium during the matches and the concourses as well, so we did see a pretty big increased trial and awareness for Budweiser Zero which was a great initiative and as I mentioned, we also delivered a great experience outside of the stadiums where we could.

We had the Budweiser hotel where we hosted over 1500 guests from around the world. We had a huge BudX weekend where we had 100 creators attend the hotel and we filmed the first ever music video filmed at the FIFA WC with those 100 creators.

So we worked to deliver a great experience for our guests in Doha. Most importantly it was 75 countries around the world that activated the ‘World’s Yours to Take Campaign’. We had Messi, Neymar Jr. and some of the key footballers in the campaign really using this moment to inspire everybody and not just the players, on the back of Covid to really go forward and chase your dreams.

A: We don’t discuss our commercial terms in public. 

A: Yes, we are excited to continue our partnership with FIFA. We have the Women’s World Cup coming up and we have announced that we are working towards 2026 in North America which is the home of the Budweiser so yes we are excited to continue our partnership.

A: We were surprised.

A: We were shocked. But we worked together and got to a good resolution and then ultimately the pivot for us was we wanted to make sure that Budweiser was still at the forefront or celebrations around the World Cup and ‘Bring Home the Bud’ helped.