Budweiser has one-upped Donald Trump’s promise to make America great again by making America beer. Beginning later this month, the script that usually reads “Budweiser” on the brewing company’s cans and bottle labels will read “America”. The label change will stay in effect through to the election in November.
Budweiser regularly redesigns its logo along patriotic themes to coincide with major sporting events, often around Olympic Games hosted stateside, but this is the first time the company has effectively changed the name of its flagship product. In a press release, the brewery mentioned several upcoming events, notably the Olympics taking place elsewhere in the Americas this summer – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – and of course the deeply contentious US election itself.
The change is US-centric to the core, though. The label’s typeface will stay the same, but the words will change: “America” for “Budweiser,” “e pluribus unum” (out of many, one, the motto of the US) for “The King of Beers,” and where the lager’s label usually contains boilerplate extolling the virtues of its “exclusive Beechwood Aging”, the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner.
Lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land and text from the Pledge of Allegiance also appear on the can.
Guthrie’s estate were nonplussed by the news. “This is the first time we have heard about it,” said a representative.
A spokesperson for Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Belgian conglomerate that owns Budweieser, confirmed to advertising trade AdAge on Tuesday that the label change would affect 12-ounce cans and bottles. The rebrand will be complete, meaning that the only beer that won’t bear the name America will be beer packaged before or after the promotion.
“We are embarking on what should be the most patriotic summer that this generation has ever seen, with Copa America Centenario being held on US soil for the first time, Team USA competing at the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” said Ricardo Marques, vice-president of Budweiser, in a press release. “Budweiser has always strived to embody America in a bottle.”
Advertising agency Jones Knowles Ritchie, which redesigned Budweiser’s packaging most recently, handled the change.
