Put people at the centre, appreciate creativity and innovate

By Ann Nurock

10 May 2019

Marcel Marcondes, CMO of Anheuser-Busch InBev US

Nurock: Hi Marcel, great talk. Please tell me about the pillars that are making Anheuser-Busch so relevant right now.

Marcondes: Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you. I guess the most important are first to make sure we put people at the centre of everything we do. The only way to be meaningful and relevant to people is by understanding them deeply first, which is easier said than done. There’s a lot of things changing internally, including moving from traditional consumer groups as research to having a fixed online panel with more than 6,000 consumers that we interact with on a daily basis.

The second thing was to start appreciating creativity and to make sure that the entire corporate market appreciates creativity again because in the world as it is today, people do not pay attention to anything. Attention is the new currency and therefore, either you break the clutter by really being creative or there is no way you can really start a conversation with your consumers.

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The third pillar is actually on innovation because we need to always be up to speed in terms of consumer needs and how to focus on the problems and solve them. By deeply understanding what they are looking for, we can better address our solutions.

So, those were three of the most important pillars that we have been working with lately.

Nurock: I loved your Budweiser Jackie Robinson campaign. Please tell us more about that.

The brand was perceived to be of a lower quality compared to craft beers. Consumers thought it was made by machines or robots as opposed to craft beers, which were perceived to be made by hand. This is crazy, but we realised that Budweiser lacked the human element. That’s when we decided that we had to humanise the brand and celebrate people.

So, Budweiser here is all about celebrating ordinary people doing extraordinary things and Jackie Robinson definitely left an extraordinary legacy to this entire country, so it was worth celebrating. Then we did a partnership with Spike Lee – we did some beautiful content, special edition packs for Budweiser and we donated funds from the sale of that packaging to help build the Jackie Robinson Museum, so we can really perpetuate his legacy.

Nurock: Thank you so much, it has been great talking to you.


Marcondes: Thank you so much. Thanks for the opportunity and also, if possible, I wanted to give a shout out to our team in South Africa in Africa. Ricardo Moreira, the president of our operations in Africa, is a big friend of mine and somebody I really admire – he is a mentor for me. Andrea Quaye, head of marketing for the African region is amazing. She is a great friend as well. I am pretty sure that the team in Africa is doing an amazing job as well. You all can expect amazing things coming from Anheuser-Busch for sure.

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