Thanksgiving Bud Light Ad
My family and I make it a tradition to watch and play football every thanksgiving. Even though we couldn’t play this year, we still had fun watching the games. During the Texans vs Lions games, we were all laughing on the couch from surprisingly all things a Bud Light commercial. This commercial does a great job making the viewer remember their products with a well made and entertaining commercial.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know about the coronavirus. The virus is making sports stadiums as empty as ever. Since there are no fans in the stadiums, teams have started to use cardboard cutouts to replace the fans. Bud light used this idea to make a creative concept for a commercial. The commercial has you look at the day of the life of a cardboard cutout. The story starts out with the cardboard cutout going to another cutout of a bud light vendor. After no luck with the vendor, the cutout walks himself through the stadium and finds a forklift of bud light. The commercial continues on the path of him trying to find bud light when someone tried to talk to him. When the cutout went outside, he found the jackpot of a truck full of bud light. He sadly got hit by a bus though which halted his search. Someone even threw him in a trash can by a bud light sign which made him cry. The story has the perfect ending though. While walking around, the cutout found an apartment building. While Inside, he found the human version of himself, better yet holding a bud light. The human version noticed this and gave him a cardboard while they watched the game together.
This commercial takes inspiration from Carl Jung’s ideas. Jung’s idea is that people are influenced by narratives. This commercial had a clear story and a simple narrative that anyone could understand. Even without using any words, you could see the story unfold that a cardboard cutout is on a search for bud light. This commercial also uses an icon. The icon can make the consumer put a face on an object. This icon was a funny cardboard cutout. By using an icon like the cutout to go along with the story, it made it a very memorable and effective ad.
Today’s ads need to be entertaining to keep people’s attention and that ad succeeded. Even if someone isn’t going to buy bud light from this ad, they are still going to remember the product. The company effectively knew its target audience, football fans, and found a way to perfectly incorporate an ad suited around them. When looking back at this year’s thanksgiving, our most memorable moment was watching this commercial together. In a very stressful time, it’s good to have a laugh, even if it’s just a commercial.
