Paul Chibe
VP Of Marketing
Budweiser
Twitter: @paulchibe01
POWER MOVE: A partnership with Jay-Z that yielded a $5 million-grossing first-time festival in Made in America.
THE RUNDOWN:Chibe spent a decade marketing to millennials at candy factory Wrigley, using branded entertainment (including Chris Brown’s Doublemint jingle “Forever”) as a key campaign tactic. For the past two years, however, Chibe has moved on to sell beer to many of those same young adults, now in their 20s, as Budweiser’s VP of marketing — also using music as a key tactic.
Last Labor Day, Chibe partnered with Jay-Z, Live Nation and ad agency Translation for Budweiser’s Made in America festival in Philadelphia, a two-day music event that grossed $5 million in ticket sales and attracted nearly 80,000 people, according to Billboard Boxscore. The company also brought new life to Stevie Wonder’s classic “Superstition” through an NFL spot, and re-upped with Pitbull as a spokesman for Bud Light, each campaign giving the brand an awareness boost among multicultural fans in the process.
All this isn’t quite enough for Chibe as he evaluates his upcoming plans for 2013. “One thing I want to do for Anheuser-Busch is continue to raise the bar,” he says, no pun intended. Noting that plans are already in the works with Jay-Z for a second Made in America, he says, “Just because we had success last year doesn’t mean that being just as good is acceptable. We have to push to make things better, and continue to surprise [audiences] with what we’re doing as marketers with music.”