Today in Digital Marketing - SPECIAL: "True" (AKA "Wazzup") by Budweiser

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

A behind-the-scenes look at how one of the world's most successful ad campaigns almost didn't happen.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Friday, July 12th. I'm Todd Maffin. As you hear this, my wife and I are on our way back from a week away at the cabin. Today, we wrap up our week of special programming with a behind-the-scenes look at a wildly successful beer commercial that changed not only the course of the brand, but the course of culture as well. And while you're listening, please take a moment to rate and review us. As you know, we don't ask that often. It really does help. And we put a link at the top of the show notes. All right, on with the show. It's 1997. Filmmaker Charles Stone is trying to break out. He'd done a bunch of short films before, did some animation, tried his hand at comedy, directed a few music videos. But he knew what the industry knew.

The big money was in feature films. And you don't just start making a two-hour movie. You start small, with a short film. Something you can get at the festivals. And Charles thought, what I need is something bigger than life. Something with a universal truth. Deep, but simple. Inspiration he had.

A budget he did not. I mean, we shot on a shoestring budget, if even a budget. You know, I got a friend of mine's video aid camera. It wasn't even a DV camera at the time. This was, what, 97, the fall of 97. That's when I shot it. Got a couple of my buddies. Long-term buddies, lifelong friends.

And like many of us, the longer you're friends with people, the more you develop your own little in-jokes, rituals. In Charles' friend's case, their ritual was the way they greeted each other. We had this way of saying, what's up? you know, and at first it started as what's up, but then slowly transformed into, you know, what's that? And the thing that's funny about it is that it was always that. It never was something that was like, what's up? Or, you know, which is, I think, the more typical route to go with that word. And for us, it was much more distorted and absurd, which a lot of our humor is based in absurdity.

So it was a process of saying, what's that? What's that? What is that? And that's something that we would do all the time. That greeting, it was a strange concept for a film. Maybe some other filmmaker would have used that as a beat in a story or a little tidbit of character development.

But not Charles. Charles decided that was the film. So he and his buddy shot it in one day in an apartment in Harlem. The film opens on a guy lying on a couch at home watching a football game. His friend calls. And the two have what is by any definition the single most boring conversation ever recorded. Hello. Yo, what's up?

None, B. What's up with you? None. One. Wait. What's up with you? Nothing. What? Wait. What's up with you? Nothing, man. Just chilling. True, true.

In the back, in the kitchen, another guy enters the shop. What's up? Couch guy answers. What's up? And the two of them do that for a while, eventually bringing a fourth guy on another phone. Hello? Hello? A fifth buzzes at the door. Yeah, yeah, hold on, hold on.

Hello? Then everyone sort of just drops out. Leaving the two original friends on the phone. So what's up, man? Not a bit. Chilling. True. Oh, shit.

Are you watching the game? True. So what's going on, B? Chilling. What's up with you? Nothing, man. Just chilling. Filming over, Charles edits it, calls it true, and starts sending it out to festivals. With this audacious description.

Encrypted phone conversation between two friends that escalates into a celebration of friendship and love. Within two minutes, the meaning of life is explicitly defined. For just a moment, think about this as if you were among the first festival people to see it. You know, the people who screen the proposals to see which films make it in. Would you have accepted it? Could you have possibly known that a reimagined version of it would reach audiences around the world?

That its cultural impact would go down in history? That it would be celebrated as one of the best ad campaigns? Nah. I'll bet you'd have rejected it. And that, my friend, is why you are not a festival director. Just days after Charles started sending True around, my rep or executive producer received like a ton of calls from people, from agents and people at various film studios, you know, asking about me and about this film. And, you know,

it like literally exploded overnight. Meanwhile, in an ad agency cubicle office, Vinnie Warren was having a bad week. He was the creative director of DDB Chicago. A couple of years previous, he'd helped land a whale of an account, Budweiser. That was the good news. The bad news was now, he had to come up with ideas for them. A lot of ideas. Every year Budweiser and Bud Light had five minutes in the Super Bowl. This is Vinny on the Irish Stew podcast a couple of years ago. That's 10 commercial spots to fill. So they would produce about 30 ads. And until now, Budweiser's ad strategy had been, well, a little lacking.

They had that lizards and frogs thing. You know, that was big. Budweiser. Budweiser. Budweiser. Budweiser. And that was very popular. But in my estimation, it suffered from the fatal flaw of having animated characters in it and not people.

Because people drink beer. I know it was funny, but it just kind of didn't do it for me for that regard. And that's when a friend of Vinny's kicked off a chain reaction that resulted in one of the greatest ad campaigns of all time. Here's how it went. Vinny's friend was a guy named Steve Weinshull from a production company called C&C Storm. He saw the film, loved it, called up Vinny and said, this film, man, you've got to see it. Vinny watched it, brought a copy into the office.

I would show this VHS tape to other people, and they would also shout, they couldn't not say it. Once you'd seen this, you couldn't not say it was up. Finney walked it over to the desk of his boss, agency art director Chuck Taylor. This film, man, he says, we've got to do something with this. He liked the idea, too. He saw the potential of it. Chuck calls the client, August Bush IV, the company's vice president. This film man, you got to license it or something.

And within a few minutes. We saw the idea. The client was, yep, we'll do it for the Super Bowl. Let's do it. Except there was one problem. One very big problem. Nobody had called Charles, the filmmaker. They'd pitched the client, got sign off, but didn't have the rights. They hadn't had a conversation. They didn't have anything. So I had to contact him and go, hey, good news, guy. I'm Vinny. We just sold your film as a butt ad and will you do it do you what

do you think about that number one and will you do it number two so we had to uh then purchase the rights to this short film and so there was a precedent for this bud light had bought a sketch from the ben stiller tv show uh and we paid him like 50 grand, I think it was, for the rights to the sketch. And he's Ben Stiller. He's a big star, right? So I said, listen, it's 50 grand. That's the going rate.

But you will get to, you know, direct this with complete creative freedom from us and me. And it'll be great fun and you'll love it. You know, and you'll have a good time. Hello? Hey, who? What's up? In the end, the film and commercial are almost identical.

The only real script edit was changing just watching the game to... Watching the game, having a butt. True. Other than that, though, the shots were identical. Same lighting. Almost all the same people. Only one of the original friends didn't want to be in it, so an actor was cast. And maybe that's how it felt so real.

Because it was real. Those were real friends doing what they did every day with each other in real life. Only now, millions would watch their ritual. And on December 20th, 1999, the ad debuted on one of America's biggest brand platforms, Monday Night Football, and in the middle of one of the most iconic years in contemporary pop culture. 1999 closed out a decade of relative peace and prosperity. But the year ended up being a kind of cultural tipping point. It was the year leading up to the spectacularly disappointing Y2K computer bug. As the new century rolled over without any power outages or other major...

It was the Europe Columbine. We can't tell you, there are probably about a half dozen ambulances that have staged here. The bombing of Yugoslavia. I've heard three or four extremely large explosions. The impeachment of Bill Clinton. The question is on the second article of impeachment. Senators, how say you? Is the respondent William Jefferson Clinton guilty?

As the world got closer to the millennium, America felt a new kind of pent-up emotion with strange and scary technologies, a destabilizing political environment, a fear of what might come next. Because up until then, the 1990s were simple. People had more channels to watch than ever before. Sitting on the couch and

doing nothing became a trademark of Generation X. The whole concept of friends just sitting around and chilling became etched deep. Hell, there was even a sitcom with the name Friends, which was little more than that. A sitcom which itself referenced the ad in 2003, as Ross walks into Monica and Chandler's apartment. Chandler rolls his eyes and says,

Seriously, dude. Three years ago. The ad won just a ton of awards, of course, including the Cannes Grand Prix Award, the Grand Clio Award. It ended up in the Clio Hall of Fame about seven years later. A year after that, Anheuser-Busch was named Advertiser of the Year. But the real accolades came not from industry, but from culture.

True was parodied in everything from movies like Scary Movie Yo. What are you doing? Sitting here watching a game, smoking some butt. True, true. to The Simpsons Hi Bart!

What's up? to The Office What's up? What's up? I still love that after seven years. What's up? What's up? I was delighted that it was a hit. Again, creative director Vinnie Warren.

And I was further surprised by all the parodies that emerged online. And I'll never forget, about three months into it, we were in New York shooting the sequels to the What's Up campaign. And it was a Saturday night, I remember. We were really tired. And I remember all our phones started ringing. we're in the lobby of our hotel and it was our friends and family calling to tell us that uh saturday night live had just opened their new season with a sketch a parody of what's up you know which ordinarily would have been caused for like great

excitement and celebration but at that point we were just like, oh, that's great. Yeah, wonderful. Click. That thing, which would probably be most, you know, biggest thing to happen in most people's advertising career, being parodied on Saturday Night Live, was just one more thing in this thing

that just seemed to have a life of its own. As for Anheuser-Busch, they milked the ad for all it was worth. There was the version with the grannies. Hello? Hey, what you doing, B? Nothing. Watching a game show, having a bud. What's up with you?

Nothing. I'm watching a game show and I'm having a bud. True, true. What's up? What's up with you? Nothing. I'm watching a game show and I'm having a buddy. True, true. What's up? What's up? Who is that? Yo, pick up the phone. There was the one where aliens return to the mothership and the alien overlord asks what they've learned on Earth.

What's up? What's up? Wassup! Wassup? There was the one in the sushi restaurant. Here you are, sushi. And wasabi. Wasabi. Yeah, wasabi. Wasabi.

Wasabi! Wasabi! Wasabi! Wasabi! Wasabi! Wasabi! Wasabi! Wasabi! Wasabi! By now, Anheuser-Busch had started using true as the brand's overall positioning statement, appearing in bold letters at the end of every TV ad they produced. Nearly a decade later, the original cast themselves would recreate the film that started it all

and turn it into a two-minute short film heavily critical of George W. Bush. Always. Our best days are ahead of us. Hello. What's up, B? Nothing. Lost my home. Looking for a job.

What's up with you? Still in Iraq. Watching my ass. True. True. Even that film got nominated for a People's Choice Award. The ad, which actually only ran on TV for three years, is said to have generated about $20 million in free publicity.

A number which seems ridiculously low to me. Part of that might be because, at the time, earned media estimates didn't even consider the internet. Mostly because when things went viral, it sort of happened underground, through email forwarding. And even then, things didn't really go viral in the way they do now. At least, until True came along.

In the end, True changed more than advertising. People in the film industry said it changed how they wrote friendship. Until then, Hollywood had used the same kind of sappy, overstated cliches. Friendship was an act, sometimes a responsibility.

But here, it was just a state of being. The language of friendship codified in perhaps the simplest of terms. And in that way, maybe Charles Stone's short film description of true was right all along. A celebration of friendship and love. Within two minutes, the meaning of life is explicitly defined. Not bad. For a 60-second beer commercial. And now, True by Anheuser-Busch, directed by Charles Scott III,

starring Scott Martin Brooks, Fred Thomas Jr., Paul Williams, and Terry Williams, produced by Vinnie Warren and Chuck Taylor of DDB Worldwide. Hello? Hey, who? What's up? Nothing, V. Just watching the game,

having a bud. What's up with you? Nothing. watching the game, having a bud. What's up with you? Nothing. Watching the game, having a bud. True. True. What's up? What's up? Yo, who's that? Yo, pick up the phone.

Hello? What's up? What's up? Yo, where's Dookie? Yo, Dookie! Hello? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that?

Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that?

Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? Who is that? So what's up, B? Watching the game, having a bud.

True. True. So that is it for our week of special programming. We do plan to make more of these documentaries about ad campaigns, and we have a separate podcast for that. Just search your podcast app for Behind the Ad with Todd Maffin and look for some new episodes to start rolling out in the fall. If you've enjoyed them this week and you get value from our daily newscast, please do rate and review us. We don't often ask. It does help a lot. And we have put a link at the top of

the show notes. It's back to the regular schedule next week. As you know, in the summer, we move Monday's news to Tuesday's just because there isn't much news in the summer on Mondays. So I will see you on Tuesday. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening.