Newcastle Creates A Super Bowl Ad With A Pre-Season Budget

Newcastle Scores Extra Points At Super Bowl With "Band of Brands" ad featuring Will Wheaton

The Patriots won the Super Bowl last Sunday but there's another big winner.

At $4.5 million per 30-second spot, the Big Game commands a lot of attention for the commercials.  And after the game, there is as much commentary about the commercials as there is about the game itself.

There were 61 national spots that aired between the kick-off and the final gun, but the most disruptive and forward-thinking of them all was an online spot that ran on television during the Super Bowl in a single market -- Palm Springs, CA.  It was here that viewers were treated to the "Band of Brands" crowdfunded commercial spearheaded by Newcastle Brown Ale.

A division of Heineken, Newcastle cannot advertise nationally during the Super Bowl due to competitive restrictions imposed by Anheuser-Busch InBev  which advertises Bud heavily during the program.   Although parent company Heineken can certainly afford it, the annual advertising budget for Newcastle is around $1 million in the U.S.  Translated into market share, Newcastle controls just 0.3 percent of the $100 billion beer market in the United States compared to 7.5% for Bud and 18% for Bud Light according to Beer Marketer’s Insights, an information provider to the industry. 

So the Band of Brands idea was conceived by Newcastle and creative partner Droga5.  The campaign launched January 12 with a call to action video by Parks and Recreation star Aubrey Plaza for brands to participate in the experiment.  Plaza reasons in the video that “Instead of blowing Newcastle’s marketing budget, let’s team up to blow all of our marketing budgets,” immediately creating a sense of community striving to achieve a goal.

Initially expecting 20-30 brands to participate, the final spot includes 37 brands mentioning nationally recognized marks like match.com all the way to a Detroit pickle maker and local Pittsburgh dental practice.  (Tip for pickle company -- update your home page!)

The excellence of this spot is not in the production values but rather in capturing the zeitgeist of today's desirable consumers which match the qualities of the Newcastle brand -- engaged forward-thinking risk-takers who are interested in the sharing economy, value for investment, a little rebelliousness, a sense of individuality and hopefully, buying beer.  

The goal for this well-executed program is increased brand awarenesss primarily from online viewing.  The television broadcast provided the kickstart to build buzz.  “You don’t need the dinosaur channels like television anymore,” states Charles van Es, head of marketing for Heineken. “We’re in a new age. You can use digital and get the same buzz.”     

Check out the Band of Brands commercial here and congratulations to the participants who took a chance and together created something special.