Monday, August 11, 2008

Budweiser Football Cup - Involving People in Brand Building

Budweiser, the pale lager beer brand owned by Anheuser-Busch, hed the 2008 Budweiser Football Cup (Bud Cup) six-on-six international final on May 5 in Manchester United’s Old Trafford. Budweiser has been organising this tournament every year since 2002, but this year for the first time it provided an opportunity to Indian football fans to participate and compete in the Bud Cup.




The beer company entered India in the middle of 2007 in a joint venture with Crown International. The Bud Cup is a 20 minute six-on-six (six players on each side) football tournament with 18 teams of amateur footballers from around the world. To be part of the tournament, participants need not be professional football players. Enthusiastic fans can form a team of six players and get themselves registered.


After the registrations, 25 teams from Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and 200 teams from Goa will be chosen through a lucky draw and compete in the regional finals in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Goa. The regional winners will then compete for the title of national champions in Mumbai. The winning team will compete with 17 other teams from around the world at the Manchester United stadium at Old Trafford in Manchester, in the UK.

To promote the event, Budweiser has fabricated a special float-on-wheels that will embark on a 39 day journey across 10 cities in India. The float will have football games that will allow fans to interact with brand and the concept of the Bud Cup. Fans can register their teams on the float itself. The float went around cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Manipal, Mangalore, Sakleshpur, Mysore, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam.

Can this innovation be used by broking companies and mutual funds to go deep into the places and arrange events Money Quotient quiz etc. in various neighbourhoods and thus involve people directly in brand building. This is in contrast to some TV show.
What Budweiser has done is bottom up involvement brand building.