INSTRUCTIONS: You will complete an Integrated Marketing Plan with your group for Budweiser. As you may know the ailing beer manufacturer is struggling. You will need to do additional research to uncover the issues that are plaguing the brand. The goal of your plan is to drive business.
BUDWEISER OVERVIEW:
In January, Coors Light surpassed Budweiser to become the #2 selling beer in the U.S. It was a major blow for Budweiser, a brand that has been in decline for the last three decades.
Certainly the changing tastes of the American consumers have impacted sales of Anheuser Busch's flagship brand, but marketing decisions have also played a big role in the fall of the iconic brand. Budweiser has tried to be everything from fratty to refined to sporty to hipster. Anheuser-Busch has always put a major focus on marketing. This is the company, after all, that spent $246.2 million solely on Super-Bowl commercials from 2002 to 2011. Edward McClelland of Salon says that from its inception, Budweiser was a "triumph of marketing over quality." The quality was questionable: Adolphus Busch, the company's founder, called his beer “dot-schlop” and preferred to drink wine and St. Louis drinkers were not fans of the drink either, but the Busch family still bought the licenses and paid rent for bar owners in exchange for serving the product.
Budweiser had its glory days in the 1950s when Anheuser-Busch helped strengthen its national brand by sponsoring shows featuring Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, and Frank Sinatra. It also promoted its beer by sponsoring sporting events and branding stadiums. By the 1980s, Budweiser was synonymous with American culture.
“Budweiser’s kind of a mainstay. It’s a good old American tradition, like going to a baseball game or a college football game,” says Kevin Eichelberger, webmaster of BeerTees.com. But something has happened in the past three decades and, while it still has clout