ST. LOUIS — Anheuser-Busch is generating lots of buzz with an ad both bawdy and hilarious, but you won’t see it on television, and it barely mentions the beer it’s advertising.
Dubbed “Swear Jar,” the too-risque-for-TV ad debuted on the Internet in 2007. A minute long, it begins with an office worker asking about a jar at the reception desk. It’s a “swear jar,” he’s told: Anyone who swears puts in a quarter.
The expletives fly when workers learn the money will be used to buy a case of Bud Light (the roughly 17 bad words are bleeped out).
“Poop,” a mousy woman says as she struggles with the copy machine. “Doesn’t count,” a co-worker tells her. She shoots back: “Shut the @#$% up!”
It’s part of a fast-growing trend, now increasingly embraced by beermakers and other mainstream marketers. Known as viral ads, such Web-only spots have become YouTube staples, show up on social-networking pages and get e-mailed to friends and co-workers. Whether they generate sales remains an open question.
“It’s definitely a trend, definitely happening,” said Benj Steinman, editor of Beer Marketer’s Insights. “But it’s still, relatively speaking, a small part of total (advertising) spending. The big part is still (on) sports on TV. That’s still where the action is for the young-adult-male target.”
Saint Louis University marketing professor Jim Fisher said viral ads work in part because consumers share them, offer online comments and even do their own parodies and video responses.
“One of the most credible forms of information is that which comes from friends, colleagues, neighbors: the so-called word-of-mouth effect,” Fisher said. “Ads like this create that buzz and excitement, the kind of things that traditional advertising is a little more hard-pressed to deliver.”
Breweries’ viral ads aim squarely at the young men central to their demographic.
“If you look at what has happened, their attention is getting fragmented,” said Andy Eng land, marketing chief for Golden-based Coors Brewing Co. “Even if they’re watching television, they’ve got a laptop on their lap, looking at YouTube or MySpace.”
Coors this spring has released two Web ads touting wide- mouth Coors Light cans. In one, a couple of young men crash a bar; in another, a backyard barbecue. One guy runs the video camera while the other annoys the beer drinkers, then amazes them with his ability to pour beer from the wide- mouth can into a glass from atop a picnic table, behind his back from a rooftop and from the rafters of the tavern.
The ads have had a combined half-million views.
