Bud.TV: A Taste of the Future of Online Content?

Last week, Paid Content linked to a story in the New York Times Magazine, talking about “new advertising” in an era where the 30-second TV ad has gone flat. The story talked about Bud.TV, Anheuser-Busch’s (AB) new foray in original broadband programming.

Armed with a $30M budget, Bud.TV is a who’s who of successful creators and businesspeople trying to crack the code: Reach men and get their attention, which is no easy feat.

Just last year, NBC (GE) launched Office Pirates and closed it when it lacked any punch. Argh! Sorry, that was too easy.

I sincerely wish Bud.TV the best, as I do any broadband content player. It’s very early in terms of watching quality, original, online-only, online-targeted programming. That’s what we try to do at WatchMojo.com-- we have 4,000 original video clips. We do not really target men or women, we just aim for the video watching-crowd. If I wanted to target men, trust me, I could. At my old company I was a part of the team that built the largest lifestyle online media property. It was pretty easy, in fact, mainly because our competitors faltered.

Men Are Not Dumb
The video market is going to be huge, I am sure, but until then, it’s splintered, fragmented and hiding. That’s why I currently do not target men or women, we just produce content to get people comfortable with watching video on the Web.

But when it comes to the men’s space, Bud.TV will have to overcome many challenges.

Men crave utter simplicity, and by forcing people to register - and then cross-referencing that information with a database of drivers’ permits! - Bud.TV fumbled the ball during the Super Bowl by turning off people, as described here, hereand here. But, in all fairness, the digital marketing elite is not really AB’s target market, which explains why the brass in St-Louis might not be losing sleep at night.

The registration was a bad idea, no doubt. But, let’s move on and consider the greater ambition of Anheuser-Busch: To go direct to their end user, even if it means hitting some hard spots, and bypassing the publishers in between. It is thus no wonder that your random publisher - small or large - does not want Bud.TV to succeed; because it hurts their business.

Men are not dumb, even though Madison Avenue would want you to think that we are. That might have something to do with the fact that a lot of smart and successful women call the shots on Madison Avenue (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course). It’s actually a good thing, otherwise marketing would be all about babes and beer (wait a minute…)

The truth is that the people running men’s programming are no better; oftentimes they insult men’s intelligence more than anything else. They dumb down the content, they talk down to their audiences. Long term, the average guy might not be adverse to going straight to a brand’s destination, but this means that the content needs to be up to par.

That is my beef with Bud.TV. They seem to launch a site with trailers and sneak peeks. That is insulting your audience’s intelligence. That, of course, is not a mortal blow. The problem, really, is that keeping the likes of Kevin Spacey, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (whose production houses were signed to develop content) interested in creating content for what is ultimately a small audience is a daunting one.

Keeping Big Screen Names On the Small Screen
I have highlighted in the past the difference in value of a broadband audience vs. a traditional text-based publisher. Online is hot and sexy now, but TV and motion pictures is where it’s at for producers like Kevin Spacey, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Over time, getting those names to remain as psyched about an online project will be a challenge, trust me. Stars like to see themselves on the big screen, and not a tiny one on a computer. And, one needs to ask, what’s it all for?

Before we do… of course, this begs the question: Should brands have a destination site? Well, it worked with airlines having magazines… so I do not see why advertising cannot become content (so long as it is done right).

Another challenge is that Bud.TV - by virtue of being owned and operated by the largest brewer in the world - will have far more scrutiny than any other men’s oriented content producer.

That’s just the start. Bud.TV will very quickly find itself asking: Are we a beer company or a content company? It can be tremendously successful at Bud.TV, but will that help them sell more beer? I am not so sure. Here’s why:

Bud.TV is actually not the first of its kind. Back in the day, one company that was both a competitor and potential partner of mine was Beer.com (when I worked in the men’s space, that is). Beer.com, it should be noted, was initially owned by Canada’s Labbatt. That did not last very long. Pretty soon, Labbatt realized that it couldn’t be double fisting. (It’s a beer drinking reference, folks.)

Beer.com is now, at least to the best of my knowledge, a totally separate, independent men’s site. The lesson is that brewers know beer best and producers know content best. Can Anheuser Busch change that? Well, it’s betting $30M that it can.

Time will tell if they wake up feeling like King of Beers or getting over a hangover.