Whatsuuupppp, dilly dilly?
Bud Light ‘relaunched’ in the UK last year.
It’s not very nice. But neither is Budweiser. These two facts (and they are facts) are irrelevant.
A medieval themed ad campaign ran to raise awareness. The TV ad was very reminiscent of how Carling used to advertise in the UK, but not as good. It felt a lot like it was created by a US ad agency who thought “England has a lot of history, so English people will love this”, but I suspect it’s much more likely the campaign was simply trying to piggyback the Game of Thrones hype.
In the Bud Light ad, the characters shout ’Dilly dilly’ instead of ‘Cheers’.
When I first saw it I thought to myself, “What does that even mean? It sounds shit… I bet they’re trying to get it into the vernacular.”
Well, fast forward several months and they clearly are.
My guess is that they decided they needed a new “Whatsuuuuupppppp!” – the famous Budweiser line from the late ‘90s.
I can totally understand them wanting to do that, but this just feels so contrived and obvious.
There’s nothing at all wrong with wanting to make a catchy phrase popular – it’s free advertising every time somebody uses it… but I do think it’s much better to let it happen more organically, or at least make it look that way.
It’s certainly cleverer if it appears to be a nice by-product of a good ad campaign.
I’ve since read a couple of articles where the creatives behind the campaign, and the marketing people at Bud, claim it is more of a coincidence. Apparently, they were only going to use the line once, but the top dog at Bud thought it was really catchy so he wanted it used more, and here we are.
In my opinion, the beer marketing campaign isn’t very good at all. It feels like it was created around the “dilly dilly” line rather than vice-versa.
So, I call BS.
That said, I might not be the target audience, and it seems to be working as people are using the phrase, so I doubt Bud Light care about my opinion.
“Dilly dilly” to Bud Light. What do you think? Tweet us your thoughts.
