When the global events industry shut down almost overnight last year, concerts and tours were cancelled, and neither artists nor brands were able to interact with fans in person for months. Many artists began to leverage digital platforms, a trend that shows no signs of slowing down, and they weren’t alone — innovative brands also looked to alternative ways to activate and engage with fans and customers.
Ronnie Yoked, Head of Experiential Marketing at Anheuser-Busch, shares that her team — and entire commercial strategy — adapted very quickly to the circumstances in March of 2020. She explains, “We decided in March to shift all our existing programs and to adapt them or create new programs that could live virtually and still provide meaningful experiences with the goal of bringing consumers together, even when they couldn’t be physically together.”
For example, Yoked shares that Movement by Michelob ULTRA, which is usually an in-person wellness festival, was moved to an online format with workouts and happy hours to raise money for gyms and studios that had been affected by Covid shutdowns. In addition, the company’s music franchise Bud Light Dive Bar Tour went virtual with Bud Light @Home to allow musicians to bring intimate IG concerts to fans.
“We then shifted that program to Bud Light Seltzer Sessions, and once we got our bearings on how to work within the confines of the pandemic, we were able to bring full-scale productions to viewers via livestream and video on demand,” explains Yoked. “These concerts helped us break the concert streaming record in the US at the time with our show with Aventura and Karol G that garnered close to 500K peak concurrent viewers when it aired.
“We also had a major New Year’s Eve moment headlined by Post Malone that garnered a total of 15+ million views. We took a lot of risks, and I would say we were leaders in this space with our focus on high-quality productions, innovative technology and platforms and sheer quantity of programs.”
Anheuser-Busch was very successful in its Covid-era activations, and the future will likely incorporate more digital elements, but Yoked shares that things were already headed that way before the pandemic. “The truth of the matter is that the XM team was already tapping into digital pre-pandemic,” she says. “We understood the power of digital to reach scale and thus had already done livestreams and used our experiences to create content to live later on-demand.”
However, although the team had a bit of a head start when it came to virtual, she notes that the shift to doing only digital activations was a bit of a learning curve, but one they were ultimately able to conquer. “Now that we are back to IRL events, we feel strongly that the silver lining is that we no longer have to be limited by either IVL or IRL,” she says.
The team can now leverage their expertise in both mediums to determine which format would best achieve business goals and satisfy customers, which “gives us in essence a hybrid approach, the buzz word of 2021,” says Yoked. “We now look at what we need to do and make decisions on if we should do an IRL event with a digital component or a digital only event, etc. It’s very empowering and makes the toolbox bigger than it was before.”
Ultimately, nothing will replace an in-person fan activation, just like nothing will replace attending an in-person festival with friends, but the option to include virtual elements leads to increased flexibility and better experiences for fans if executed properly.
Yoked shares that Anheuser-Busch is specifically “looking at content creation and the ability to stream or leverage content later from our events. That means we are including the appropriate teams at the start to be able to achieve those goals and the appropriate promotional and media strategies to back the plans up.
“We have already been back at large-scale events in music and sports and have put on events ourselves. We feel strongly that there is a path forward even in these challenging times, and we look forward to continuing to bring IRL experiences to our consumers. We will continue to work closely with our partners to ensure we are following all health and safety guidelines and we will make changes and pivot whenever the situation calls for it.”