Budweiser Continue Campaign to Make Mlb Opening Day a National Holiday

Budweiser, with the help of Mr. Ozzie Smith as a third party endorsement, attempts to raise its brand awareness in the 35 year old and older population through the mean of mass unpaid media campaign (PR Newswire, 2014); using primary research commission with Weber Shandwick, Budweiser launched a unique campaign through massive media tour by Mr. Smith and maximizing the trendy social media exposure to attracts the consumer attentions as well as garner petitions to make the MLB Opening Day an official holiday, which coincidence with the day with the general rise in beer sales.

According to Seawright (2013), an effective paid media campaign will enable an organization to achieve effective earned media; Budweiser paid media campaign of video series and national TV commercial honoring to the legacies of baseball resulted in 3.08 million views, had led them to achieving earned media of 239 million media impression and 30,000 petitions, this had resulted in massive media exposure for Budweiser. Employing the Grunig and Hunt’s 4 Models of Public Relation, we can see that Budweiser is employing the Publicity model inspired by Barnum; as one of their campaign goal is to influence the general population to petition in relation to making the MLB Opening Day an official holiday through video series and celebrity endorsement, this can be perceived as a form of propaganda since it is a one-way communication method from Budweiser to its consumer population, with Budweiser trying to manipulate the population into doing something that benefit Budweiser.

SMART Analysis:

Budweiser objectives is specific as their goals is to motivate 100,000 people to petition to persuade the White