TANZANIA – Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), the world’s largest brewer has crowned Castle Lite Tanzania as the 2021 winner of the “Creative Use of Data” category, at its in-house and globally recognized Creative X Awards.
The Creative X Awards exists to celebrate and scale creative ideas that drive effectiveness and business growth.
Being the only African brand to emerge a winner this year, Castle Lite bagged the accolade courtesy of its cold tracker innovation which seeks to ensure consumers can easily and readily access cold beer, keeping to the brand’s promise of “Extra Cold Refreshment”.
“With hiking electricity prices in parts of Africa, three out of five informal outlet owners were turning off their fridges to save on running costs, making cold beer hard to find.
“We needed to compel Castle Lite’s retail partners to spend the extra on electricity to make cold beer accessible to consumers and so deliver on our brand promise of Extra Cold Refreshment. The answer was an innovative Cold Tracker,” highlighted Castle Lite Team Tanzania (Tanzania Breweries Limited).
Cold tracker is an adapted 3G device which monitors both temperature and location and has been installed into 212 fridges in retail outlets across Tanzania.
To sweeten the deal, geolocated out-of-home leader boards were installed which displayed – in real time – which fridges in the immediate vicinity were offering the coldest Castle Lite, creating the world’s first temperate-based media trading platform: cold beer and cold fridges in return for valuable marketing space.
Under the category, Colorado’s – Colorado Amazônica received honourable mention for creating a beer that changes its price according to a deforestation index. The higher the index, the more expensive the beer.
Amazon has been suffering deforestation and as a brand that values the local biodiversity more than anything, Colorado launched the initiative to help consumers understand the depth of the issue and its impacts through beer.
US-based Bud Light Seltzer was shortlisted among the category’s finalist for making waves with social content that appealed to consumers and indirectly promote the product.
The rise in popularity of the seltzer category has been attributed to meme culture, but no brands were taking advantage of the trend. As a brand that stands for fun, Bud Light Seltzer jumped at the opportunity.
This led to the brand hiring memers, with the idea resulting in a brand-new position to Bud Light’s marketing department, never seen before in the industry – a Chief Meme Officer (CMO), a 3-month position dedicated to serving the internet with ten “fire” Bud Light memes a week for compensation and a whole lot of free seltzer.
Other than the “Creative Use of Data” category, AB InBev also crowned winners under the following categories: –
Better World – Budweiser – Save Pub Life/UK
Creative Brand Strategy – Project OB/South Korea
Creative Execution – Budweiser – Messi 644/ GHQ
Design & Packaging – Blasfemia VBIs/Argentina
Entertainment & Branded Content – Brahma Sertanejo Entertainment Platform/Brazil
Media – Michelob ULTRA – NBA Courtside/USA
Product Innovation – Brahma Duplo Malte Launch/Brazil
Retail & E-Commerce – Tienda Cerca/Colombia
Scale & Adapt – Rally for Restaurants/GHQ
Smart Drinking – Beer Cap Project/Colombia
Speciality Awards
Grand Prix – Michelob ULTRA – NBA Courtside/USA
Agency Partner of the Year – FCB NY
draftLine of the Year – draftLine/ UK&USA
Marketing Team of the Year – All ABInBev Marketing Teams Globally