For the first time ever, Cannes Lions has named a back-to-back winner for its Creative Marketer of the Year award.
The marketing and advertising industry’s biggest awards show and conference has named AB InBev as its 2023 recipient, coming on the heels of the global brewing giant’s 2022 win.
AB InBev, with brands like Budweiser, Bud Light, Corona, Michelob Ultra, and many, many more, is the world’s largest brewing company. It accounts for something like one in every four beers cracked on the planet. As you’d expect with that kind of size, it’s always been a ubiquitous marketer, but until the last few years, it hasn’t actually been one of the most creative.
“They’ve significantly raised the bar once again and embedded a system and culture that ensures continued success is inevitable,” says Lions CEO Simon Cook. “This win bucks the trend and demonstrates an ongoing commitment to creativity as a driver for growth.”
Standout work from this past year includes Michelob Ultra, which continued its impressive push into pop culture in 2022 with McEnroe vs. McEnroe. Using AI and machine learning, the brand built five virtual versions of tennis legend John McEnroe, each designed to mimic him at different stages of his career, and had them play against the real-life McEnroe. It then turned those matches into a 45-minute branded special that aired on ESPN, attracting 10 million viewers (the 2022 NBA Finals on ABC averaged 12.4 million viewers), 3 billion media impressions, and more than 150 earned media placements.
AB InBev’s global chief marketing officer, Marcel Marcondes, credits this latest Cannes win to a years-long process within the company to instill and scale an ethos and commitment to creative effectiveness. He further credits former CMO Miguel Patricio with setting the course back in 2018.
“He said, let’s be honest, we’re not at the level we should be and it’s important we face that,” says Marcondes. “The most important assets of our company is our brands. Unless we do meaningful work that really make these brands loved by people, that drives growth, we’re never going to be the company we want to be. That set a clear ambition for the company.”
‘We’ve made a lot of mistakes’
The resulting self-evaluation process led the company to establish an internal marketing culture and capabilities department. That includes an internal marketing academy, which prioritizes education and inspiration for its marketing teams at events like Cannes and others—all in the name of making AB InBev work better.
“It’s been a process of learning, and we’ve made a lot of mistakes,” says Marcondes. “The big thing we’ve learned from experience is that the trap is when you think great work is what gets people’s attention, period. People feel, especially nowadays, that they need to chase attention in culture. Just because something gets a lot of attention, doesn’t mean it’s great. The key elements we learned from our mistakes is that creativity is great only when it’s used to address real consumer and business problems.”
He points to how Michelob Ultra turned the consumer problem of the NBA bubble during the pandemic into an opportunity for fans to get closer to the action with its Courtside partnership with Microsoft. Or this year, when Corona held a global Plastic Fishing Tournament, a series of events held around the world to remove plastic debris from the ocean and raise awareness about marine plastic pollution.
“We learned the most important thing in every creative process is to start with a clear definition of the problem,” says Marcondes. “If you don’t know the problem you’re trying to solve, you can get all the headlines in the world, but nothing really happens. You’re not making any difference.”
Over the past few years, the company has been meticulously tracking the correlation between the attention and growth. Michelob Ultra’s work was getting a lot of attention, and it became the company fastest growing brand in the United States.
In the past, AB InBev has been known as a brand buyer, using acquisition as a major avenue for growth. But it’s now focused on organic growth from its existing brands, and Marcondes says that requires a different algorithm. “We needed to become a different company, and we needed to behave in a different way,” he says. “Any time a company makes a decision to lead via organic growth, brands become the most important assets of those companies.”
Last year, the company hit all-time highs in its brand power metrics, as well as volume sales. The back-to-back win at Cannes is especially meaningful because it reflects that and signifies consistency. “Companies come and go; the big challenge is to keep the standard high,” says Marcondes. “That’s another question we had to address. Is this really something that’s become embedded in our ways of working, or was it just a good wave we had? . . . We are actually changing—we have new ways of working for real. That’s the assurance an award like this brings.”
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