Beck’s celebrates with an AI beer – sheer marketing genius

Becks

Beer

Published: April 15, 2023

min read

Beck’s, the AB Inbev-owned beer brand turned 150.

To celebrate this, Beck’s didn’t look back on its long journey to celebrate but looked ahead.

Beck’s has created the world’s first beer with AI – its ingredients? Water, malts, yeast, hops, and AI!

The entire marketing campaign for this beer was also made by AI.

Beck’s set the two AI Platforms – ChatGPT and Midjourney – the task of coming up with a special-edition beer, its design, its logo, its name, marketing, and branding. AI used millions of different flavor-combinations and picked this one as the best ‘futuristic concoction.’

Beck’s Autonomous, (that is what the beer is called) has a custom logo and container for the beer, which were also generated by the AI. It also produced all the marketing assets, including a 360-degree video showcasing the container.

The initiative is part of the brand’s way to mark its 150th anniversary year. We wanted to celebrate this milestone by looking forward to the future and doing something ground-breaking! So… we wanted to harness the power of technology and A.I. to envision the future of beer.

Laura Salway,

Marketing Director, Beck’s to Adweek.

AI was used to create the ad campaign that will run across print, out-of-home and social media. While this much is true, its PR outreach still appeared to be handled by a human through Weber Shandwick.

AI and marketing and now beer production?

Ever since ChatGPT was released, there has been a tremendous interest in everything AI. Since then, AI has crept into so many facets of our lives. From planning gardens to playing the devil’s advocate to designing a part for a spaceship, people use it for just about anything. Let us not even get into the writing that ChatGPT does!

Since AI is all the rage right now, it is a very smart strategic move to tap into all the hype and the hoopla and release a beer that has been created by AI.

When brands are a little wary of letting AI take over their marketing and creative aspects of communication, here is Beck’s showing the way how. AI has created the product, the branding, the container, the name of the product, the design and all the marketing assets.

A smarter part of the strategy is this – AI is still in a phase where no one really knows what the outcome of an AI-involvement with a brand could be like. A remarkable ability of AI is that it can go through all the information that currently exists even in the darkest corners of the internet, process it and come up with an answer to a challenge or a proposition.

Even a giant like Coke asked its customers to create “real magic” using AI and Coke’s assets and come up with digital art. The best entry would win a position on Time’s Square and Piccadilly Circus, among other prizes.

Even Coke didn’t dabble with AI – but let its customers play – to see what can transpire with an AI infusion in the mix.

Beck’s smart move – was this –

They actually used AI to come up with the product, the packaging, the branding and the marketing – very cool move; nobody really has done something like this before!
They tapped into AI (the one huge thing in the world today) to create quite the buzz as they celebrated being 150 years old – really cool; grabs the attention of just about everyone; great way to makes waves!
It is a limited-edition beer – just 450 cans! You don’t really know if this is the winning formula for a beer. At least you don’t know if this can be added to their regular product line. So you play it safe. Call it limited edition. Make it exclusive – so only 450 people across the planet will own this beer.

Now if that is not smart marketing strategy – I don’t know what is!

Author

Bill Walker

Bill is a marketing strategist who believes in the power of storytelling. He's known for his creativity, wit, and ability to connect with audiences across all channels. When he's not crafting marketing campaigns, you can find him hiking in the mountains or reading a good book.