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By Tripp Mickle
Sports Business Daily February 26, 2010

Budweiser prided itself on throwing some of the biggest bashes at the Beijing and Torino Games, and it’s looking to replicate that success this weekend in Vancouver.

The beer company and U.S. Olympic Committee partner has created its third Club Bud at an Olympics. It set this one up in downtown Vancouver at the Commodore Club on Granville Street, the primary pedestrian thoroughfare downtown. The 19,000-square-foot space typically hosts Live Nation concerts. It holds 1,000 people and features a concert stage for DJs, a 2,646-square-foot dance floor, an upstairs lounge area and three bars that exclusively serve Budweiser.
The company opened the venue last Friday night with a party that it co-hosted with Burton Snowboards. It hosted a party the following night with the NHL and threw one last night on its own. Tonight, it’s hosting a party with Under Armour and Saturday night it’s partnering on a party with lululemon athletica, a high-end yoga apparel company.
The five parties it will host in Vancouver is one more than what it hosted in Torino. It hosted eight parties in Beijing.

The company employed the same strategy of partnering on parties with other companies in Torino and Beijing. In Torino, it partnered with Sports Illustrated, and in Beijing, it partnered with MTV and others. The partners offset some of the costs for Bud, but the purpose of their participation is to help make each night different and fun, said Brad Brown, Anheuser-Busch’s senior director, sports marketing.

Budweiser used Club Bud to help drive local sales with the assistance of its sister company and Canadian distributor, Labatt Breweries. Labatt ran several local promotions including a party-crasher promotion online that offers to award tickets to select people who become fans of Club Bud on Facebook. It also offered a U.S. consumer promotion with a sweepstakes to win tickets to the Olympics.

“It created opportunities we wouldn’t have had without the Games,” Brown said. “We have the activation and retail extension to help the bottom line and sales. That’s the primary rub. It provides us a platform to sell beer.”

Catherine Pringle, Labatt Breweries’ manager, corporate affairs, added: “In the on-trade, Club Bud has given Budweiser, Canada’s best-selling beer, great visibility in downtown Vancouver. The resulting demand to attend Club Bud has been overwhelming.”

To give the Commodore Club a winter look and feel, Budweiser erected a glacial facade around and above the stage. During parties, it adds logos from its participating partners on stage. It hung green lights from the ceiling to create an aurora-borealis effect indoors, and it set up brown leather couches and oriental rugs to create a ski-lodge feel.

Relay Worldwide of Chicago worked with Budweiser on the design.
Posted by: Tripp Mickle / February 26, 2010 / 9:15 AM / Print Article