Dilly Dilly! How Anheuser-Busch Won Big By Trusting Its Gut

“Dilly Dilly!!” The cry echoes across the land. And it teaches us 3 important lessons:

   1. Nothing succeeds like humor in social media.

   2. Testing is good, but you have to trust your instincts and be willing to take a chance.

   3. Advertising does not necessarily translate to sales.

In case you’ve never seen a “Dilly Dilly” Bud Light television commercial, here’s the first one which aired in August 2017.

So what does “Dilly, Dilly” actually mean?

According to Miguel Patricio, Anheuser Busch’s chief marketing officer: “‘Dilly Dilly’ doesn’t mean anything. That’s the beauty of it. I think that we all need our moments of nonsense and fun. And I think that ‘Dilly Dilly,’ in a way, represents that.”

But a lot of thought must have gone into it, right?

The ad was created by Wieden + Kennedy New York. An art director and copywriter at the agency were tossing ideas back and forth. One of them said, “Dilly Dilly” and the other laughed, so “we put it in there thinking we could always come up with something else later if the client liked the script.”

The ad aired last fall during college and NFL football games, and went viral on social media. It spawned several sequels including this one which aired in Philadelphia markets just before this year’s Super Bowl. A corresponding ad was made for New England Patriots fans.

Brands typically test their ads before airing them. Did the audience like the ad? Did they understand the message? Could they remember the brand and product names?

So we can assume the first “Dilly Dilly” ad was a hit with test audiences, right?

Wrong.

Anheuser Busch’s Miguel Patricio says the ad didn’t test that well:

“We did (the) ad… because the new season of Game of Thrones (was) coming, but when we tested, it didn’t test that well… (but) we said, ‘Consumers will get it,’ especially with repetition. We have a chance here for this to become big.

“So, we went against the research and we gave a chance to ‘Dilly Dilly’ and we are so happy!”

They trusted their gut– their instincts and experience. And it paid off when the ads went viral.

Did the “Dilly Dilly” ads boost sales of Bud Light?

N0– at least not in the short term.

Anheuser-Busch InBev had a strong 2017 4th quarter, but its North America sales dropped 0.6%, with Bud Light declining by 0.85% for both the full year and the 4th quarter. Bud Light’s volume (hectoliters) declined 5.7% in 2017.

Sounds like the ads were a failure, sales-wise, but it’s important to establish some context: beer is in decline. Especially “Big Beer.” (Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch InBev together control about 90% of the U.S. beer market.)

Consider these stats: In 2016, AB InBev sold 14.4 million barrels of Budweiser in the U.S. That was less than one-third the volume of the beer’s peak in 1988. Bud Light’s 2016 U.S. volume was 35.2 million barrels– but that was a drop of 15% from its 2008 high.

Why the decline? A shift from “big beer” to craft beer. More ominously perhaps, Gen Z prefers spirits and wine to beer.