What were Don Cheadle and Arnold Schwarzenegger doing in those goofy Bud Light Super Bowl teasers? All is revealed this morning in this extended version of the content from BBDO that the brand will air Sunday night during the Super Bowl.
In the behind-the-scenes style video, a random dude named Ian gets transported to the craziest night of his life after he's accosted by an attractive woman in a bar. She gives him a Bud Light and asks him if he's "up for whatever happens next." He is, of course, up for it—and so he's whisked away to a waiting limousine filled with a bachelorette party, plus Reggie Watts spinning tunes—and that's just the beginning.
Ian gets styled by Minka Kelly and is then taken to a strange building, where he meets Cheadle and a llama in an elevator, attends a party filled only with twins, and winds up in a room where he gets to play Schwarzenegger in table tennis. When that spirited game ends, a wall collapses and Ian is suddenly in the middle of a rock concert with One Republic.
At a screening of the ads for the press on the floating Bud Light Hotel in the Hudson River on Thursday night, Bud Light executives described the excruciating planning process for the execution—after all, they had just one chance to film everything as it happened. (Actually, they had two chances—they put a second man through the same experience on the same night, but ended up going with Ian because of his bubbly personality.)
At the end, Bud Light is described in on-screen text as "The perfect beer for whatever happens." The hashtag is #UpForWhatever. A condensed version of the same content will run in the form of a :30 and a :60 during the Super Bowl on Sunday night. The work was directed by HeLo's Jeff Tremaine.
Bud Light said the new positioning taps into the energy and optimism of millennials, and that the brand is excited to pursue the messaging more broadly after this launch phase.