Anheuser Busch Talks Advertising

Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc., one of the world’s largest advertisers, shared with cable and content companies its measured – and often risky – approach to connecting with consumers to market numerous beer products across a variety on distribution platforms.

The beer giant, which became part of the media when it launched its own Web site, BudTV.com , the day after the Super Bowl, also emphasized some core changes in the advertising business as companies like its own expand their branding and engagement efforts well beyond traditional, network TV.

“Twenty years ago, it was easier to market and reach consumers because there were three TV networks and we had three products,” recalled Tony Ponturo, head of all media buying for sports marketing at Anheuser-Busch and a 25-year industry veteran who started as a page at NBC. “Today, our consumers have changed. They are urban, sophisticated and ethnically diverse. And we distribute over 100 brands.”

The company found from its research that males age 21-34, a key target demographic, spend an average of more than six hours a week on the Internet. To keep pace with changing video consumption habits, the beer giant increased the amount its spends on Internet advertising from 25 percent in 2005 to 5 percent last year and 10 percent this year, according to Ponturo.

“The 30-second commercial should not and will not survive on the Internet,” proclaimed Ponturo, whose company has relied on these traditional made-for-TV spots to capture the attention of its sports viewing audience whether they fall during the Super Bowl or on non-sports programming on some 20-plus networks. “We’re looking at every opportunity to advance our messaging.”

Ponturo credited the company’s decades of TV sports as boosting it from a 28 percent share of the U.S. beer market in 1980 to just more than 49 percent today.

The innovating company has made its top-ranked Super Bowl ads available as content to such popular Internet destinations as YouTube and MySpace as well as AOL and MSN, as one step in its ongoing evolution of its customer engagement efforts.

More notable, however, was the launch of BudTV.com, which Ponturo admitted has presented challenges to the company, but at the same time provides valuable experience and data to help shape its understanding of media opportunities.

“More than anything, we see BudTV as an incubator for ideas,” said Ponturo. The site is billed as “The Future of Online, Off-the-Wall Entertainment,” and features entertainment videos as well as user-generated content.

Ponturo stressed that the company is continuing to explore all opportunities to reach and engage its customers well beyond the duration of the comical, 30-second TV ads that is best know for in marketing circles, citing risk as on of the firm’s five key principles for success.

“We took a risk becoming the exclusive beer sponsor for ESPN in 1980,” said Ponturo of the then-nascent all sports cable TV network, that has flourished and expanded. “And we’re venturing out into uncharted waters again.”

Anheuser Busch Companies Inc. www.anheuser-busch.com

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