Anheuser-Busch last week pulled the plug on its broadband humor website, Bud.tv. In bypassing traditional media and programming its own content, Bud.tv had promised to transform the way brands reach consumers.
Launched in January 2007 just after the Super Bowl, Bud.tv offered a mix of unbranded, original content, from reality to humor. The website featured 24-hour live and on-demand programming and other content, such as Webisodes, sporting events, consumer-generated content, field news reports, celebrity interviews, music downloads and comedian vignettes. The short shows - such as those showing Joe Buck interviewing people in the back of a taxi, or office workers being replaced by chimpanzees - would not be tied to Bud Light or Budweiser.
While A-B execs hoped Bud.tv would draw about 2 million monthly unique visitors, the venture never attracted much of a following. Initially, consumers were turned off by a cumbersome registration process to verify they were at least 21 years of age. But the bigger issue appears to be that, for some time, the content could not be shared - a restriction not in keeping with what has become almost a requirement of the internet.
Writing in Advertising Age, Brian Morrissey said, "YouTube's success was, in part, due to allowing users to embed its video players wherever they liked. Bud.tv, on the other hand, locked down its content on a destination site."
Speaking to Promo Magazine, Michael Levy, vice president of marketing for Anheuser-Busch, agreed that the inability to share content was a problem.
"Consumers loved to interact with our brands online," Mr. Levy said. "They liked it so they were willing to spend an average of seven minutes [on Bud.tv]. That was good. But one of the things we learned is we didn't allow consumers to share the content."
Budweiser also learned that it was too conservative with its branding.
"We were reluctant to put a lot of branding out there, but we learned from consumers it was OK," Mr. Levy said.
Going forward, Budweiser's digital strategy calls for increasing its presence with partners such as Yahoo, Facebook and Hulu, among other sites.
"We're not cutting back, we're just re-purposing what we are doing," Mr. Levy said. "We are going to spend more time on places people are already going. We realized that it's not necessary to have your own standalone network. You can do things with partners and still have a strong presence."
Discussion Question: What lessons can be learned from the experimentations and demise of Bud.tv?