The story of a Budweiser campaign built by watching hours and hours of football goals
One year ago, Budweiser announced a multi-year partnership with the UK’s Premier League and Spain’s La Liga football leagues, a deal spanning five continents and more than 20 countries around the world. MullenLowe SSP3 was tasked by the AB InBev beer brand to communicate the essence of this monstrous deal in Colombia.
While researching ways to do that, the team at MullenLowe SSP3 realised that Budweiser had been a part of these leagues all along. After analysing data from over 4,000 goals from the Premier League and La Liga’s history, the agency spotted a similarity between the formation of the goals and Budweiser’s famous ‘bowtie’ logo.
From this, ‘Goals of Kings’ was born, a campaign that allowed Budweiser to become part of the history of Europe’s most popular and famous sport without ever officially being there before.
12 of the goal formations have been immortalised in a book that sits at the heart of the sponsorship in Colombia. Each sequence has been beautifully crafted using different art direction and copy techniques.
With the delayed 2020 season finally winding up, LBB’s Addison Capper chatted with Carlos Andrés Rodríguez, Chief Creative Officer at MullenLowe SSP3 to find out what inspired this idea to find the Budweiser logo within goals.
“I guess when you see what the creative team found that afternoon, it does seem a pretty crazy idea! But when I dug deeper, I realised that this idea was something only an art director could find. The guy behind the idea (Byron Poveda, art director) has a very specific style based on shapes and lines,” said Carlos.
“He has a unique way of creating abstract forms around objects to create logos. That, combined with the fact that he doesn’t like football, makes more sense: I can imagine him just seeing a bowtie when seeing the Bud logo, and seeing just lines when watching a game of football. Then, he just connected them… and boom, there you have it.”
