Irish bloggers answered the call for a ‘beer and pizza’ – no it wasn’t a Tweet up, but an invitation by Ogilvy on behalf of Diageo Ireland to watch the first airing of a new ad for Budweiser to be aired on Sky TV as part of a new advertising campaign starting on 4 July to coincide with America’s Independence Day.
The ad called ‘Lyrics’ will be aired to coincide with the launch of Sky’s Green Button advertising technology, and the advertisement will appear exclusively through the channels on the Sky platform for the first week of the campaign.
‘Lyrics’ is an ad about people from all over a city coming together to spell out the words to the Beatles track ‘All together now’ in time to a train as it passes by. The song is not one of the most well known Beatles songs and was recorded on 12 May 1967 at Abbey Road Studios and mixed the same day, but was not released until 13 January 1969 when it appeared on the sound track of the film Yellow Submarine.
The ‘Budweiser Lyrics ad was written by Dave Henderson and Richard Denney of DDB in London specifically for the Budweiser brand in Ireland, though we were advised that it may be used by other markets.
We had the opportunity via Skype video conference to speak direct with the DDB London team and the ads director Chris Palmer (who also created the Skoda ‘Baking of…,’ ad which saw a car created out of cake, and the ‘Carlsberg’s Old Lions’ ad’.
The Budweiser ‘Lyrics’ ad was shot over 5 days from an actual train on the metro-rail as it tracked around the city of Chicago. The sound track was recorded by ‘The Hours’ who recorded the track in their hotel room and some of the percussion was the banging of a fire extinguisher against a metal heater.
You can find out more about the making of the Budweiser ‘Lyrics’ ad here in my interview with Matt Delahunty of DDB here:
You can watch the Budwieser ‘Lyrics’ ad here.
Budweiser Lyrics Ad Challenge
To coincide with the launch of the ad there is a challenge: the ‘Lyrics’ ad was put together using 30 different scenes, each one illustrating one of the lyrics in the ‘All Together Now’ song. The challenge is for the general public to create another version of the ad with video clips submitted.
All you have to do is record a short video clip depicting one of the letters, numbers or words from the song. Upload the video with that lyric to the Budweiser ‘All Together Now’ website. The best 30 video clips will be edited to create a new video – dependent on the quality of submissions it may even be aired on TV.
The first 100 people to upload their clip to the ‘All Together Now’ site will win a case of Budweiser.
The closing date for video entries is the 15th August 2009.
About Sky TV Green Button Advertising
This new service allows for advertisers to watch extended ads and unique content, find out more about particular products or services, or accessing related behind-the-scenes or exclusive footage. Green Button content can range from 2 minutes to 2 hours and the service even allows for the series-linking of advertising content, for those brands wishing to create episodic advertising.
Additional Resources
You can read Christian Hughes review of the evening here.
Update: Read more reviews from Richard Fitzgferald, Niamh Smith, and Darragh Doyle
Watch the original clip of ‘All Together Now’ from the Yellow Submarine film:
View the other photo’s I took from the Budweiser blogger outreach event here.
Personal Perspectives On The Budweiser ‘Lyrics’ Ad
It is great to see more Irish companies starting to consider connecting to bloggers in a meaningful way – I know Matt Delahunty of DDB and the Ogilvy team appreciated the feedback they received about how to share information about the AllTogetherNow.ie campaign and website – Matt actually commented to me that he wish he had spoken to me 3 months ahead of the campaign being launched.
And my personal view on the Budweiser ‘Lyrics’ ad?
I was not at all blown away by the first viewing of ad (yes I do drink Budweiser and if you check out my profile you will see that I’ve a long history with Diageo PLC and Diageo Ireland though I am not connected to them in any way now).
I was underwhelmed at first but realised that it was due to 2 reasons – I was not close enough to the screen to watch the ad and understand the intricacies of the shoot and I have to agree with the others who attended the event who said that the ad grew on them the second and third and fourth time of watching.
I think watching the ‘Lyrics’ ad close up or on a huge screen allows you to appreciate the real detail of the ad and I’m excited to know what the response will be from the public to participate in creating a follow up version.
I am also waiting for spoofs to be made of the Ad – can you imagine a remake by the YouTube generation on the Docklands Light Railway or the Dublin Luas? You could really have some fun with it!
I was watching TV this last week and also caught the new Guinness Ad raising a glass to Arthur Guinness to celebrate the 250th anniversary and the Guinness brand manager said on a clip before the ad that they hoped that the new Guinness ad would be remembered as an iconic ad.
Personally I don’t think it will. Of the two ads to be launched in the same week by Diageo Ireland, my money is on the Budweiser ‘Lyrics Ad’ will be one one that stands the test of time – but what do you think?
Disclosure: I was invited to the Budweiser blogger outreach event and was not asked or requested to write this review.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Krishna
Great read and thanks for making us aware of the idea behind the new Bud campaign. I like you think the Budweiser campaign will connect hugely with its target audience and in a different way to the Guinness advert with its target audience. The whole interaction opportunity from the Bud brand is exciting and really integrates the fun side of social media, video producing and then there is the traditional advertising continuing to deliver brand essence and driving awareness of the new campaign on a macro level. However, I do think the holistic brand campaign for Guinness celebrating the 250 years will be remembered for many things the brand is doing and giving back to the community in Ireland. The Guinness advert connects, in my opinion, on a truly different level in that it evokes ‘pride’ and loyalty for the drinker in a drink that is truly iconic across the world. Like you I will watch this space with interest. Sharon
July 16th, 2009 at 6:09 am
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August 28th, 2009 at 9:50 am
[...] been some great examples recently with Bord Gais (some example bloger coverage here) and Budweiser (some example blogger coverage here) in particular working well with bloggers to include them in the loop about new products but the [...]