Beer company executive details revitalization plans

Wednesday, March 2, 2005 | 10:54 a.m.

The makers of Bud Light beer have a theory about what happened during the infamous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction at last year's Super Bowl halftime show.

Someone making a delivery to the wardrobe area spotted a Bud Light and used the costume to grip the bottle top, accidentally tearing the fabric.

At least, that's the way the story goes in an advertisement that Anheuser-Busch presented on its Internet site.

"It got 1.7 million hits, probably the most watched Super Bowl ad that never ran," said August Busch IV, the president of the nation's largest brewery. "Do you think we should have aired it?"

The overflow crowd attending Busch's keynote speech at the Nightclub & Bar Convention and Trade Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center responded with a resounding yes.

The four-day convention, which drew an estimated 38,000 people to Las Vegas, concludes today.

A clever advertising message is one of the elements Busch promised to continue to deliver to bar and nightclub managers interested in revitalizing on-premise beer sales.

Busch said his company would add new products, flavors, packaging and marketing in a bid to elevate the image of beer and keep it as the beverage of choice in the nation's clubs and taverns.

The St. Louis-based beer baron said the company would expand those campaigns while still pressing the message of responsible drinking by adults and fighting underage drinking and driving while being intoxicated.

Busch said the company would deliver innovative products and elevate the image of the product by:

And then, there's the advertising.

Busch said clever ad campaigns are one of the hallmarks of the industry and he showed a series of ads, some of which debuted during last month's Super Bowl telecast.

Among them was the spot that was the most popular Super Bowl ad according to a survey by USA Today, showing a reluctant skydiver who is encouraged to jump out of the plane by an instructor who throws a six-pack of Bud Light out the door to entice him to follow. The skydiver is left as the last man on the plane after the plane's pilot jumps off the plane to chase the beer.

Busch said that while most of the company's ads are high on the humor quotient, an ad that has drawn considerable acclaim, titled "Applause," shows a crowded airport that spontaneously begins applauding a group in military attire. The tagline simply says, "Thank you," with the display of an Anheuser-Busch Co. logo.

"We have some very creative, funny ads, but this was a nice opportunity to pay tribute to the men and women of the armed forces," Busch said. "We felt it was something that needed to be said and the response has been fantastic."

Anheuser-Busch, which on Monday was named to Fortune magazine's 2005 list of "Most Admired Companies," sells 50 percent of the beer consumed in the United States and Mexico.