Andrew Quay

For year two of the Bud Football Campaign, the focus shifted to arguably the most successful athlete of all time - Lionel Messi. Right before the campaign was about to launch, he turned the sporting world upside down with the announcement that he wanted to leave his club of 19 years causing an uproar of fan and pundit criticism. We turned all the hate and criticism into a statement of ambition and perseverance to punctuate “Be A King.”

The second act of this campaign celebrated one of the last remaining unbroken records held by legendary footballer - Pelé - most goals scored for a single club. A record that symbolizes the core values of the brand - ambition and dedication. Upon breaking this record, we released a film on Messi’s Instagram channel that rewrote the famous Budweiser creed emboldened on the bottle to reflect this achievement.

To continue driving earned media for the brand, we created limited edition goalie bottles labeled 1 through 644 (the record setting goal) and sent them out to each keeper who Messi scored against in his career.

Roles: Campaign Strategy, Creative Brief, Content Strategy, Launch Plan

Press: AdAge, The Sun (UK), Business Insider, SportsProMedia, Goal

Awards:

• 2021 Cannes Lions — Silver in Entertainment Lion for Sport, 6 Shortlists

• 2021 The One Show — Bronze in Social Media and Merit in Real-Time Response

• 2021 Shorty Awards — Best in Wine, Beer & Spirits

• 2021 Shorty Awards — Best in Sports

Budweiser has a longstanding presence in football (re: soccer) as an official sponsor of The World Cup. But it only happens every four years. In 2019, we entered year one of a three year sponsorship with two of the most elite football leagues in the world - The English Premier League and La Liga - to expand the brand’s presence in football culture every year.

As a premium brand worldwide (outside the US), we couldn’t take the expected die-hard fan passion approach that most beer brands take. Global footballers are some of the most influential personalities in the world who transcend the sport they play into broader lifestyle passion points like fashion, music, and art.

To think bigger than the traditional sports sponsorship approach, we launched Budweiser’s Be A King platform by celebrating the Kings of the Game on and off the pitch. The approach allowed us to widen the aperture of traditional sponsorships to include interests beyond what you witness between the whistles.

As a result, we turned a new brand message, Be A King, into a statement of attitude, ambition, and inspiration for fans.

Role: Strategic Lead (Sponsorship/Activation Strategy, Content Strategy, Comm’s Planning/GTM, Talent Strategy)

Press: MediaPost, Little Black Book (LBB), The Drum

Awards: One Show (Short List)

We turned a small contractual detail into a branded entertainment series that paired the Kings of Culture with the Kings of the Game. We created one-of-a-kind fashion pieces inspired by the players and made by iconic fashion designers.

Film 1:

Marcelo (Real Madrid, Left Back)

NorBlack NorWhite (Indian Streetwear Designer)

Film 2:

Marc-André ter Stegen (Barcelona, Keeper)

Zhe (Chinese Streetwear Designer)

Roles: Strategic Lead

BudX was an experiential music platform hosted by Budweiser across the world’s biggest cities. It was a very expensive concert and party experience that only made an impact on those that were lucky enough to attend.

To increase the ROI of the program we repositioned BudX from a party experience to a global lifestyle community that connects creators within music, art, fashion.

We brought 200 influencers together from 20 countries to connect, create, and collab at the Nautilus Hotel in Miami during the Super Bowl weekend. Musicians, rappers, photographers, artists joined the experience in exchange for content throughout the weekend. We ended up turning this event into a production house that generated over 2,000 pieces of content and over 1B media impressions.

During the weekend, my team and I led a war room with our production team to capture the experience, create bespoke content, and provide media guidance to boost influencer posts to hit our impressions goal.

Roles: Platform Positioning, Content Strategy, Influencer Strategy (partnership w/Vice), Community Development, Comm’s Planning, Live Content Development, Copywriting, Creative Direction

Press: AdAge, iHeart Radio, Rolling Stone, Campaign US, Event Marketer, MixMag

Awards: 2021 Shorty Award - Micro Influencer Strategy

Role: Strategic Support (Campaign Strategy, Insights, Launch Plan)

Press: AdAge, Maxim, SoulCollector, SneakerNews

Coors Light has long been positioning itself as “The World’s Most Refreshing Beer.” After re-establishing the iconic Buschhhhh sound, we set our sites on one of our competitors just to show how ridiculous that claim is by taking it head on. We positioned the auditory cue of Busch Can Crack as “The Sound of Refreshment” and created series of films called The Refreshment Challenge (TRC), in which blindfolded characters had to decide which beer was most refreshing purely by the sound of it.

Roles: Strategic Lead (Creative Brief, Competitive Audit)

Awards: 4x Cannes Lions (Bronze)

Busch has been a NASCAR sponsor for 40 years, a sport in which sponsors play a massively role in making the sport. Most sponsors are guilty of logo slapping - placing their brand marks everywhere possible to get those valuable impressions. Given the brand’s experience in space, we wanted to celebrate Busch’s 40th anniversary and give fans something no other brand could. We positioned the brand as hardcore sponsor for hardcore fans and created a piece of memorabilia that any NASCAR fan would covet.

What did we do? We turned a racecar into cans of Busch beer. We cut, melted and molded Kevin Harvick’s record setting #4 Busch car to create 40 collectible cans of beer.

During the Daytona 500, fans could win a can by answering NASCAR trivia questions on Twitter with the #Car2Can. Responses flew in, making the contest hashtag trend above the race itself.

Roles: Strategic Lead (Sponsorship Strategy, Campaign Strategy, Comm’s & Content Planning, Rollout, Contest Design

Press: The Drum

Awards: Shorty (Integrated Campaign), 4x One Show (Short List)

Many would assume that hunting's steady decline in popularity would be a boon to wildlife conservation efforts. In reality, the opposite is true. Because 60% of wildlife conservation funding is sourced from the sale of hunting permits and game-related taxes, the drop in hunting activity threatens America's ability to fund conservation efforts—and the situation is becoming critical.

So as an advocate of the Great Outdoors, we partnered with popular bar game Big Buck Hunter to alleviate the issue. We created and sold Busch Buck Hunter Permits for $5, with all proceeds going to the National Forest Foundation. Drinkers could swipe the permit at any Big Buck Hunter machine to unlock a brand-new “Great White Buck.” Any player who hit the White Buck was entered into a chance to win a Busch branded Buck Hunter arcade game of their own.

Roles: Strategic Lead (Activation & Content Strategy, Go-To-Market Planning)

Press: The Drum

To celebrate the holiday season and drive a little PR, we created the perfect White Elephant Gift. The Busch Cooler Stocking was a custom-made 12-foot long, insulated stocking that perfectly fit 12 cold, crisp Busch Beers. We sold out in a week.

Role: Strategy Lead

Busch Beer has been an advocate for the Great Outdoors for decades. It represents the brand’s world and it’s the playground for our drinkers. But forests have been under duress for years with many desperately needing restoration.

So we helped The National Forest Foundation plant 50,000 trees without lifting a finger. To kickoff the effort, we took a modern approach to simple media placement, YouTube Pre-Roll ads, and with a simple hack we turned it into Tree-Roll. Simply put, if you didn’t skip the ad, we would donate a tree.

Roles: Strategy Lead

Press: The Drum

Corporate training. It sucks, right? So when a global company like AB InBev wanted to turn every employee into knowledgeable beer lovers, we needed a fun, engaging way to get everyone on board with beer — from the brewers to the finance department. Which was the perfect opportunity for us to turn AB InBev's corporate training on its head.

To make corporate training fun and engaging, we had to rethink it from the ground up and bring it into the modern age. Which is where Hoppy comes in: a first-of-its-kind learning game for all things beer, available right on your phone.

With Hoppy, employees around the world can learn, earn rewards, and have fun at the same time. Hoppy offers gamified quizzes that let players earn knowledge, badges, and Beercoin to redeem for prizes.

Built on Blockchain, Beercoin is a brand new digital currency that employees can earn by doing anything beer-related, from completing training quizzes to checking in at breweries and happy hours.

Roles: Strategy Lead (Stakeholder Interviews, Product Positioning, Content Management, Internal Promotion, Brand Identity, Brand Personality)

Awards: 2x Shorty Awards - UX/UI, Gamification

DraftKings was a known commodity among sports fans nationwide. But when the legalization of sports betting was passed the company set out branch out beyond daily fantasy sports. We launched the first legal online sports book in the United States by tapping the company ethos and passion or sports. We launched it as the Sports Book Built By Sports Fans.

Building on our efforts of beloved character, Dr. AftKings, we introduced the first legal sports book outside of Nevada by pairing the Doc up with known bettor and NBA Hall-of-Famer Charles Barkley.

To extend the reach and relevance to casual bettors, we created a series of humorous and educational videos that detailed the basics of betting called “Barkley Knows Bets.”

Role: Strategic Lead (Product Positioning, UX Testing, 1on1 Interviews, Content Strategy, Go-To-Market Planning, Campaign Strategy)

Since the brand’s launch, DraftKings’ advertising has always been about one thing: winning money. And it worked. Until it didn’t. We needed to change the brand perception in order to drive growth and be more than just a cash-prize fantasy site.

Part of the challenge was converting season-long fantasy players into daily-fantasy players. We highlighted the biggest friction points with season-long play: your star player goes down, you miss out on the sleeper pick, or you get beat on the waiver wire. They’re inevitable but there’s nothing you can do. We pointed out these frustrations while positioning DraftKings as the cure with a new brand character - Dr. Aftkings.

We turned these frustrations into “ailments” and put Dr. Aftkings front and center to provide the cure. And in doing so, we were able to shift the perception of the brand and drive acquisition in timely and entertaining ways through the season.

*I took over as the strategic lead halfway into the first year campaign. I was tasked with identifying more tension points among season-long players to extend the efforts.

Awards: Shorty (Finalist)

Building upon the success of the #RefreshTheTalk campaign, we launched The Open Mic Project – an online platform that amplifies the voices of many and inspires fans across the country to express their beliefs and experiences of acceptance through music.

In partnership with pop-star, Rita Ora, we coordinated a custom track inspired by the stories of acceptance generated from our fanbase. We released the track at 60th GRAMMYs Awards.

This effort accompanied a new brand purpose: to create a more open world, one night at time. We tapped into Absolut’s storied history as an advocate for marginalized communities to re-establish the brand’s value system.

Role: Strategy Lead (Brand Positioning, Campaign Strategy, Content Strategy)

Press: MediaPost, BrandChannel, E! Online, Entertainment Tonight, iHeart Radio, The Drum

To launch Absolut’s biggest innovation investment in the company’s history - Absolut Lime - we released the product with a cultural statement of the brand’s values that literally walked the red carpet during the 59th GRAMMYs Awards.

Every year, female artists are asked the same question on the red carpet: “what are you wearing?” Building off of the #AskHerMore movement, we created the #RefreshTheTalk Campaign that was designed to shift the conversation from fashion to subjects with meaning. We designed custom LED clutches that displayed the causes that mattered to our celebrity talent. When they were inevitably asked about their attire, they could turn to their clutches to shift the conversation and refresh the talk.

Inspired by the refreshing qualities of Absolut Lime, we refreshed tired tropes of red carpet conversation while taking over the 59th GRAMMY Awards with a fully integrated campaign that dominated the conversation.

Roles: Strategy Lead (Campaign Strategy, Content Strategy, Go-To-Market Planning, Onsite Activations)

Press: AdWeek, LBB, Event Marketer, CBS, Entertainment Tonight, Nylon

Spirits brands long lack a direct relationship with their consumers because of the regulatory nature of the alcohol category. There’s always a middleman - bars, grocery or liquor stores. With the rise of at-home consumption, we set out to change that relationship for the launch of the new Limited Edition Absolut Electrik Bottle.

The idea came from a simple insight: many people inherently avoid blending their different friend groups in social settings–especially around the holidays. “To blend or not to blend?” is a universal dilemma in the party-filled holiday time period.

As an iconic brand that stands for epic nights out, we had a unique opinion on the subject: that bringing in unexpected company should be embraced because it can create social energy that leads to new and unexpected experiences.

So we created the first-of-its kind mobile app that connected party goers with party throwers.

Log into Hoppr to view and swipe through nearby parties just as you would on any dating app. If you matched with a party thrower, you would receive the address and details for the event. If you were a host, you could register you party on Hoppr and swipe for new guests.

Roles: Product Positioning/Branding, Community Growth Strategy, Campaign Launch Strategy, Go-To-Market Rollout, UX/UI Guidance

Press: AdAge, The Knockturnal, LA Guest List, Paper Magazine