Creative Execution

We fed our audience’s daily WeChat addiction by enabling the songs to be streamed, customized and shared as messages within the app. In music and video streaming platforms, we enabled people to post their unique song to WeChat, direct from mobile, or from PC by generating unique codes in interactive-banners. We drove social discovery by turning people’s Weibo tweets into lyrics, creating new unique versions of the song that were tweeted back to them automatically. When people searched for trending social content in Baidu, we served search-ads that created unique versions of the song using their search content as lyrics.

Our made-for-mobile experience led China’s youth to customize more than 3 million songs, catapulting the Budweiser track to #1 in the top-music charts. We created music history, and got Budweiser’s edge back, lifting brand imagery in all 3 key areas of “leading trends”, “for nightlife” and “for young people”. Most importantly, we delivered our primary marketing objective, with Budweiser becoming the “Favourite Brand” for 35% more 18-24 year-olds, leading our nearest competitor as “Favourite Brand” by more than double the number of premium beer drinkers. We achieved Budweiser China’s highest brand preference scores, EVER, driving sales 25% higher YOY.

Budweiser was losing its edge with Chinese youth. As EDM (Electronic-Dance-Music) was breaking through China’s underground, we sensed a natural opportunity to reclaim Budweiser’s position as the leading culture-shaping brand in music and “Favourite Brand” for Chinese nightlife influencers. Chinese youth use mobile to express themselves, posting songs and lyrics to mobile social platforms to convey their mood and emotions. So, we created the world’s first totally customizable song. We enlisted superstar DJ-Avicii and local hero Wang Leehom to record China’s first mainstream EDM hit, featuring “YOU”. We enabled every fan to create a completely unique version of the song featuring their own lyrics using custom-built mobile text-to-autotune technology. We identified their key mobile behaviours, and integrated the technology with key mobile media to turn WeChat messages, searches, and tweets into songs. We sparked a mobile music craze and put Budweiser at the heart of EDM’s crossover moment in China.