HISTORY's Moments in Media: Whassuuuuuuuup? Turns 21

Twentyone years ago it was new It was introduced to the world on December 20 1999 when Budweiser aired the first ad in its iconic quotTruequot campaign during a Monday Night Football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers And it became a national sensation after Bud aired another quotTruequot spot during Super Bowl XXXIV on January 30 2000The line started with a longrunning joke among four lifelong friends in Philadelphia One of them was Charles Stone III a music video director who made a short film called True as a way of showing off his talents and trying to break into feature films It was a depiction of everyday life for these guys amp160and more or less just like the eventual ad Stone and his three buddies are sitting around answering the phone whassup39ing each other and giving each other the same response quotNothin39 watchin39 the gamequot The standard reply quotTrue truequotIn late 1999 an associate creative director named Vinny Warren at Bud39s agency DDB Chicago got his hands on a copy of the short which was making the indiefilm rounds DDB39s US chief creative officer at the time Bob Scarpelli worked out of the Chicago office He39d go on to become the agency39s worldwide CCO and then its worldwide chairman Scarpelli believed in advertising with quottalk valuequot a term he trademarked which basically meant that he wanted to achieve what everyone in advertising wants to achieve creating work that strikes a powerful chord and becomes something everyone talks about jokes about and riffs on When Warren saw Stone39s short film he knew he saw the sort of guyswatchingsports camaraderie that39s at the heart of the Bud brand He was also pretty sure he saw talk valueHe was rightTo turn the film into an ad DDB made only the smallest of changes The quotwatchin39 the gamequot response became quotwatchin39 the game havin39 a Budquot There was discussion of changing the quottrue truequot response then seen as somewhat inscrutable slang into something more commonplace like quotright onquot But it stayed and in fact inspired the tagline of the entire campaign DDB also looked into casting actors but after auditioning dozens the agency and client agreed to Stone39s suggestion to retain him and his friends One from the short didn39t want to be in the ad and an actor was cast Stone directed and went on to direct the rest of the campaignThe first ad broadcast during Monday Night Football was a 60second spot that was essentially a reshoot of Stone39s laconic guyshangingout film For the Super Bowl there was a 30second entrant one seen as slightly more accessible to a broad audience with the tonguewagging set against a traditional beerad plot of a guy trying to hide from his buddies the quotgirliequot things he does with his girlfriend And as the winter progressed Bud rolled out more Whassup adsThey had talk value to spare Radio DJs riffed on the slogan Latenight hosts made jokes The campaign may have hit at the perfect moment for a tagline to break through so widely Before widespread DVR use when people still watched nearly all TV and commercial breaks live but with sufficiently widespread internet penetration that people started making and sharing Whassup memes BBD estimated the campaign earned 20 million in free publicity This being 2000 that estimate counts only TV and print they didn39t have a way of tracking digital valueWhen Bud did early testing of the ads there39d been concerns that an older audience just didn39t get it The guys in the ads thought some of that was racism that older whiter wealthier distributors didn39t like to see the King of Beers represented by men of color As the campaign progressed BBD got in on its own joke and expanded the Whassup phenomenon to include other protagonists At the height of Sopranos mania a bunch of Jersey types asked quotHow you doin39quot A group of besweatered Yuppies inquired quotWhat are you doingquot The guys in the ads reported that a distributor who39d initially been dismissive later apologized saying that his kids were into the tagline and his grandkids amp160and his wife They also reported getting loudly Whassup39ed across the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza by none other than Mrs Brady herself Florence HendersonThe quotTruequot campaign petered out after a year or what Bud execs saw as a natural life cycle and also once 911 prompted a shift from jokey ads to patriotic ones But it still lives on in jokes and references and occasional reunions whether for Barack Obama in 2008 or the lockdown edition released in April of this year featuring shelteringathome former NBA stars Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade WNBA star Candace Parker and DJ DNiceUnsurprisingly the original campaign won just about every major advertising award including a Grand Prix at Cannes But perhaps most important to AnheuserBusch it also boosted Budweiser39s salesClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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HISTORY's Moments in Media: Whassuuuuuuuup? Turns 21

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HISTORY's Moments in Media: Whassuuuuuuuup? Turns 21

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