ANHEUSER-BUSCH

Scenario
Anheuser-Busch was looking to raise awareness for its Emergency Drinking Water Program, a 30+ year initiative to provide clean, canned drinking water to communities affected by natural disasters. Overall, the program has donated more than 86 million cans of water.

The Practical Approach
The brief called for a “stunt” to raise awareness for the program, and it would’ve been expected to come up with an idea with lots of cans and hand out a big check.

Our Practically Dangerous Solution
We realized there was an opportunity to not only raise awareness, but also do even more good through the program by helping family members that were often left behind in natural disasters:

Our pets.

Nearly 50% of people that stayed behind during Hurricane Katrina didn’t want to leave a pet, and 80% of people prematurely re-entering an evacuation site do so to rescue a pet. And animals have been intrinsic to A-B, from Clydesdales, puppies and dogs to, yes, even lizards and frogs.

We expanded the Emergency Drinking Water Program to help all friends in need — whether they have two legs or four. American Humane was added as a partner and an integrated “Prepare for Your Pets” social media, PR & digital campaign launched during National Preparedness Month to encourage people to prepare for yourself and those that rely on you. All month, preparation tips were posted on social media and emergency supply kits for both people and pets were seeded with influencers.

The campaign drove nationwide awareness with hundreds of earned print and broadcast media stories generating nearly 7 million impressions, as well as 22 million social impressions. Additionally, the campaign helped bolster A-B’s perception receiving over 97% positive/neutral sentiment across all media.