Moneybox

Bud Light Wants Tinder Users to Come to Its Secret Party Town

Tinder + Bud Light.

Screenshot from YouTube

Bud may be failing to reach millennials, but Bud Light is winning. Last year, following the success of its “Up for Whatever” ad spot in the 2014 Super Bowl, Bud Light turned an entire town in Colorado into “Whatever, USA” and in September invited 1,000 millennials to party there for a weekend. The campaign leading up the mysterious rager included fake news reports produced by the Onion’s creative team and listicles published on BuzzFeed. “We’re reaching approximately 50 percent of 21- to 27-year-olds every week via Facebook,” David Daniels, Bud Light’s brand director, told AdWeek at the time. “And we should reach about 80 percent of the 21- to 27-year-old population an average of 50 times throughout the summer.”

Now, though, Bud Light is launching what might be the ultimate in millennial marketing offensives: an in-app advertising campaign for Whatever, USA, on Tinder. The “It’s a Match” ads, which will reportedly only be viewable by Tinder users who are 21 and older, will appear between swipes on the popular dating app. Tinder users will be able to play and pause the video as they like, or follow a link to Bud Light’s external site to learn more. “There’s a lot of synergies between the Tinder audience and the audience we’re looking for,” Bud Light’s Hugh Cullman tells AdWeek. Because really, what could possibly be a better match than cheap beer, a millennial-focused dating service, and a secret party town with box-car racing and Vanilla Ice

At any rate, Bud Light is aiming to repeat its 2014 success with another Whatever, USA, party to which it will invite another 1,000 fans for the last weekend in May. Aspiring attendees can enter for a chance to win through Tinder, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The bash will also take place in a new, yet-to-be-determined Whatever, USA, location. Because keeping Whatever, USA, in the same place as the previous year doesn’t really say, you know, whatever.