The King of Beer and Branding

How Budweiser and Bud Light Redefined the Redesign

Including two brands in one post might seem like cheating, but 2016 was just too good of a year for the Anheuser-Busch marketing team, designers, and design agency jones knowles ritchie. It would be a disservice to talk about the incredible success of the 2016 Budweiser rebrand without also including it’s younger lighter sibling, Bud Light in the discussion. With the label “King of Beers”, it’s about time the packaging and branding lived up to the name.

It is a little unfair to just now recap this remarkable new design since it is already inundated into our minds through countless beer commercials, but a list of the Most Influential Rebrands of 2016 wouldn’t be complete without these two titans. Even though the liquid inside still tastes the same, the packaging has a bold new look and feel.

These hot new cans hit the shelves in early 2016 and it has been a major hit ever since then. The esteemed branding site BrandNew recently listed the new Budweiser packaging at their top spot in The Best Reviewed Projects of 2016. I couldn’t agree more. Much like what happened to me writing about the recent Guinness redesign, I began to wonder why these brands didn’t look this way the entire time. JKRGlobal hit this one out of the park, or stadium, or whatever venues the lager is being poured in.

Up close is where this design really shines. The rich textures and details give the cans and bottles an added depth and complexity often reserved for the microbrews and craft beers. Despite all the added design elements, the cans undoubtably remain Budweiser and Bud Light. This is a testament to the millions of dollars spent on advertising instilling the brand name, logos, and colors in our mind. Even though it is still the same cheap beer, the details speak to a maturity or refinement as the packaging embellishes on the craftsmanship used to brew a beer…even on a massive scale.

“Our entire brand positioning is all around showing how much we care about the beer, that we’re ‘Brewed the Hard Way,’” - Brian Perkins, VP of Marketing, Budweiser North America.

In fact, one of the most amazing aspects of Anheuser-Busch’s 2016 was the fact they took both of these iconic brands and the revered new identities and changed once again. This time, not because they weren’t working, but because a market leader like Anheuser-Busch doesn’t shy away from making bold statements. To shelve a brand new identity and expand on it within months of introduction seems crazy, but damn they are good at this.

We saw Budweiser make the first statements at the start of summer when they swung for the fences and rebranded with an entirely new name. Instead of the iconic script Budweiser written across the can, there was a new word, simply reading: America.

Bold. Shocking. And incredibly effective. Look at the details in the design and you can see the genius of Budweiser’s marketing and branding on display. The AB crest is replaced with the two letters “US” and instead of the sliver slogan “King of Beers” it now reads “E Pluribus Unum”. No need for a new identity to match the summer campaign, instead it reshaped the motto and name of our nation to match the Budweiser identity. something only a national icon like Budweiser could pull off. It calls back to memory CocaCola’s “Share a Coke” campaign where we saw personal names printed on the cans.

No wonder this company is at the top of the industry. There is a sense of pride holding a can that simply says “America” on the 4th of July…or handing my father a can of coke that reads “dad” across the label. That emotion transcends the taste of whatever is in the can. Learning from of these examples, Bud Light put something else on its cans to be proud of: NFL teams.

The 2016 Bud Light NFL cans are something marketers dream of. The cross promotion is perfect and reminds us once again why this is the most popular beer in America. It takes years of brand equity, loyalty and advertising to be able to just strip your branding off and still sell millions of cans of “Beer with your team on it”. Even though the marketing remains similar to the look of the 2015 NFL cans, it instantly noticeable how the simplified cans practically sell themselves. It is shocking how good some of these cans look with just a team color and logo on them.

Bud Light is selling more than just beer at this point. They are tapping into the fanaticism that NFL fans carry with them like a badge of honor. The tailgates, viewing parties, and fandom are further fueled when every Sunday people show up carrying beers that look like their favorite team.

Producing 28 colorways (Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings were omitted according to a Forbes article because the teams have sponsorship ties with MillerCoors) seems counterintuitive when it comes to identity design, but there is something amazing about stripping a product of everything except your brand logo, a teams logo, and the color of a cities favorite team. Expect to see this trend continue to play out in new marketing campaigns across sports, holidays, and other events as brands learn from Budweiser & Bud Light’s excellent examples.

In a calendar year we saw 4 new designs from the Anheuser-Busch companies and each one could be an excellent case study in brand strategy, design, and marketing. This is also a testament to the design agency JKR’s ability to execute on such a lofty vision. By looking back at the past design choices it is clear to see the elegance and simplicity achieved by these refined new identities.

“Consumers today want a brand with genuine brewing credentials. Bud Light is leaning into its heritage and unrivaled brewing expertise in a way that’s looking forward, not back. The result is a confident and contemporary expression of a brand consumers have known and loved for decades.” - Tosh Hall, Creative Director at JKR

To polish it all off, JKR did something that seemed so obvious in hindsight and finally aligned the look of Bud Light to mirror it’s big brother Budweiser. There is no doubt that these two brands will be filling our refrigerator shelves and tv screens with advertising in the coming months all to help reinforce their sleek and refined identities. After all, they didn’t get to be known as the King of Beers for just the taste.

Look & Logo is a project dedicated to the design thinking that fuels creative visual identities, brands, and logos. Follow along on Twitter or Instagram to see the latest looks & logos or follow along on Medium for more in depth discussions on design. If there is work you would like to see featured or reviewed, want to talk design, or just want to say hi, feel free to get in touch.