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Skipping The Super Bowl, Budweiser Is Donating Its Ad Dollars To Covid-19 Vaccine Awareness Efforts

This article is more than 3 years old.

After 37 years of Super Bowls, Budweiser won’t be in this year’s Big Game.

Anheuser-Busch’s flagship beer brand is instead donating its advertising dollars to the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative to raise awareness of the Covid-19 vaccines.

To explain why it’s skipping this year’s game, Budweiser today is releasing a 90-second video—narrated by actress Rashida Jones and set to the song “Lean On Me”—that features footage from the past year of the pandemic. There are people singing out their windows, a car parade surprising elderly neighbors, a dog making a surprise appearance on Zoom, NBA players kneeling while wearing “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts inside of an empty stadium, masked grocery shoppers dancing and people getting Covid-19 vaccines.

According to Anheuser-Busch U.S. Chief Marketing Officer Marcel Marcondes, the decision is “good for society, it’s good for the economy, and it’s good for the brand.” Along with partnering on the creative output that the Ad Council is developing to help people better understand the vaccines, Budweiser is also donating the price of the airtime that would have been their commercial slots during the Super Bowl.

“We’re seeing one or another company saying they’re out of the game this time,” Marcondes says. “But for me, the thing is why? What’s the purpose? So what are you going to do better instead? For Budweiser, it’s not that we are out just because we're trying to save money or what, right? Our thing is we have a clear reason. We’re not doing this, because we would rather do that. I think this is the right way to go. I still believe and we used to believe the Super Bowl is a powerful platform. 100%. The country still stops to start to watch the game, and moreover, they stopped to watch the ads.”

Budweiser, The Ad Council and other partners have their work cut out for them when it comes to getting people to trust the vaccines. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer released earlier this month, just 33% of people surveyed said they’re willing to get the vaccine “as soon as possible” while another 31% said they'll get it in six months to a year. Edelman found that respondents with “good information hygiene”—or those who engage with news, avoid information echo chambers, verify information and don’t amplify unvetted information—were more likely to take the vaccine within a year.

Even before Budweiser made its announcement, the Ad Council earlier this month said it had raised $37 million of its $50 million for vaccine awareness efforts. Other companies that have contributed include Bank of America, Facebook, General Motors, The Humana Foundation, NBCUniversal, Walgreens and Walmart.

This doesn’t mean Anheuser-Busch won’t be in the Super Bowl. In fact, several other brands will still air ads during the game. Several brands will still have a presence, but Marcondes says the ads won’t have quite the same tone as usual. In fact, he says strategy documents aren’t as much about the game as usual, since the ads are more about “meaning and relevance” than entertainment. 

According to Marcondes, the decision to have Budweiser sit out the game is that it allows the company to have “the best of both worlds” by contributing to society while also improving the public’s perception of the vaccine with efforts outside of traditional advertising.

“Hopefully, there will be more Super Bowls ahead of us, and we can always be back,” he says. “But this time, there is something better that Budweiser can do for people.”

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