The Gainesville Sun: This past summer, Anheuser-Busch unveiled a game it calls Bud Pong. The company, which makes Budweiser, is promoting Bud Pong tournaments and providing Bud Pong tables, balls and glasses to distributors in 47 markets, including college towns like Oswego, N.Y., and Clemson, S.C. Bud Pong may soon expand into more markets, said Francine Katz, a spokeswoman for Anheuser-Busch.
“It’s catching on like wildfire,” Katz said. “We created it as an icebreaker for young adults to meet each other.”
Beer companies like Anheuser-Busch have made promoting “responsible drinking” a matter of corporate philosophy, partly as an answer to criticism that they market to youth. But Katz said Bud Pong was not intended for underage drinkers because promotions were held in bars, not on campuses. And it does not promote binge drinking, she said, because official rules call for water to be used, not beer. The hope is that those on the sidelines enjoy a Bud.
On the ground, though, it may be a different story. At the Esso Club near Clemson University, Jessica Twilley, a bartender, said she had worked at several Bud Pong events and had “never seen anyone playing with water.”
“It’s always beer,” Twilley said. “It’s just like any other beer pong.”
When told about the Esso Club, Katz responded that her information was that the club used water, and that distributors were instructed to “conduct retail promotions responsibly.”
[UPDATE] Anheuser-Busch has discontinued its Bud Pong promotion in retail accounts, saying that in some instances the promotion was not being carried out as had been intended.
“It has come to our attention that despite our explicit guidelines, there may have been instances where this promotion was not carried out in the manner it was intended,” said Francine I. Katz, Anheuser’s vice president of communications and consumer affairs.
“As a company that has invested more than US$500m to promote responsible consumption among adults and to discourage abuse, we believe it is important that our intentions with Bud Pong not be misperceived,” said Katz.
This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen in a long time. Seems to me that when I was in college we played a similar game but it involved quarters, not ping pong balls … and the glasses were filled with beer, not water.
Bud could do much better.
Mike Bawden
Brand Central Station
Perhaps they should have stuck with a real sports drink, like Gatorade.
There’s a pretty interesting excerpt from a new book about Gatorade’s branding triumph with the Michael Jordan “Be Like Mike” campaign. It’s from “FIRST IN THIRST: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat into a Cultural Phenomenon,” by Darren Rovell.
Check out the Brand Autopsy blog for the excerpt and an audiocast.
The branding of beer-pong
Bud shouldn’t have to stoop to patronizing tactics like claiming the official rules call for cups filled with water. It’s not their fault some people are unnecessarily uptight about young adults enjoying themselves.