XLNTads posted the assignment, which included a creative brief, release forms and all the necessary assets, such as the Bud Light animated logo and the "Dude" music track on its website. Anyone interested in submitting an entry could download these materials after reading and agreeing to the assignment's terms and conditions. Creators then had until March 31 to submit their masterpieces. The videos selected by Anheuser-Busch (a hockey-themed spot and an animated spot featuring ants) were posted on Bud Light's March Madness website and can still be seen, along with the four agency-produced spots, on their Dude Madness site.
Dude. (Extend your brand)
So why would an advertising behemoth like Anheuser-Busch want to offer up a slick, successful campaign from a heavy-hitting agency like DDB of Chicago to the general public? According to Bud Light Director Rick Leininger, the decision was all about extending the brand.
"The XLNTads initiative was a great way for us to extend our Bud Light Dude campaign while staying in tune with pop culture," Leininger said. "Working with XLNTads, we were able to tap into their network of video contributors to generate a bigger take on the Bud Light Dude concept."
Staying in tune with pop culture and actively seeking input from end users appears to be part of a concerted effort by brands to appease younger consumers, a lesson Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times claims advertisers are quickly learning. In his April 27 piece on the campaign, titled "Dude! Like Those Ads Live Forever," Itzkoff writes, "For their creators and the brewery behind them, the spots have provided a different lesson: that young consumers are using the internet and other technologies to express the ways they want to receive (and even control) advertising, and it's up to advertisers to hear this message."
Dude. (It was, like, a perfect match)
If the "Dude" concept seemed to Anheuser-Busch like a good candidate for consumer-generated takes, it may be because the concept itself was developed in a less traditional manner. "Dude" originated not from an agency but from two outside writers, Clay Weiner and Kenny Herzog, who made a short film of the concept, mainly for their own amusement. Then, as Itzkoff explains in his Times article, through a contact at DDB Chicago, the primary advertising agency that handles Budweiser and Bud Light, Herzog and Weiner were able to get their film seen by executives at Anheuser-Busch.
The executives obviously liked what they saw. And so did the public. According to Itzkoff, the original "Dude" spot has been viewed over two million times on YouTube alone, and all four agency-produced "Dude" ads have been viewed a total of more than 13.5 million times on YouTube, MSN.com and other online sites featuring video. Throw in television viewership, and it's a wonder the word "dude" has not yet supplanted "the" as the most used word in the English language.