Dive Brief:
- Anheuser-Busch InBev is launching a new campaign for its Bud Light Lime-A-Rita line backed by the largest investment the four-year-old brand has seen to date, complete with five new ads set to air in 2016. In 2014, ad campaigns came to around $19 million.
- The new campaign aims to bring "margarita moments to life in unexpected places," Mallika Monteiro, senior director of the Rita brand team, told Ad Age. The investment includes the introduction of the new line Lime-A-Rita Splash, a lower-alcohol variety that AB InBev is plugging for weekday consumption.
- After a successful debut, the Rita brand has struggled as the flavored malt beverage market becomes more saturated. Volume for the brand slumped 23% in the fourth quarter, according to a recent Sanford C. Bernstein report.
Dive Insight:
Focusing on "margarita moments" is in line with other new marketing strategies taken by the food and beverage industry. Coca-Cola's new one brand, product-centric approach integrates its products into similar "moments" in ads, and Hershey's new masterbrand experiential marketing strategy focuses specifically on experiences had with its products that drive relevance and appeal to consumers' emotions and nostalgia. The debate continues whether product-centric or experience-based marketing will win out here, but what's clear is that lofty, convoluted marketing messages not easily associated with the product or brand are likely a concept of the past.
Competition is stiff for the Rita brand, particularly as the hard soda market continues to grow with the debut of Henry's Hard Soda from MillerCoors and even rival products from its own parent company, including Best Damn Root Beer from AB InBev's new brand Best Damn Brewing Co. However, analysts believe that not only Rita but the entire category of sweet malt beverages could go flat for brewers as experimental millennials bounce between beverage categories, making the cycle of heightened popularity for any particularly category shorter today than in the past.
In the past, new flavor releases kept momentum going, but the returns on that strategy have withered in recent years. This seems to go against the movement toward more varied and exotic flavors that consumers, particularly millennials, are asking for, but continuously introducing new flavors "gets more and more difficult to cycle.