Creative studio JibJab, Santa Monica–the shop behind the pre-election video “This Land,” which featured animated versions of John Kerry and President George Bush verbally attacking one anther to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”–and Budweiser have formed a marketing partnership to create online branded entertainment.
To informally kick off the alliance, co-founders Gregg and Evan Spiridellis directed and produced the :35 “Roll Out The Barrel,” showing on JibJab.com and Budweiser.com. The video features collage animation versions of the Budweiser lizards, Frankie and Louie. Decked out with hats, canes and red-and-white striped vests, the reptiles sing about Clydesdales, putting Miller beer on the run and replacing wine and martinis with a Bud–all of this to the tune of a polka classic.
“It was just a little something to put out, a quick little fun piece announcing the deal to get everyone excited about what’s coming,” Gregg Spiridellis said of the teaser video, which featured music from Wojahn Bros. Music, Santa Monica.
The first official work to come out of the JibJab/Budweiser partnership should appear on the two parties’ Web sites later in the summer. Although he couldn’t say much about the upcoming work, Spiridellis shared that it will probably be a one to one-and-a-half minute musical piece. He also hinted that there would be interactive projects to come. “Instead of pushing out a short video, we’re going to actually have users get involved in the campaign.”
LEGACY OF LAUGHTER
It was “This Land” that caught the client’s attention, senior director of Budweiser marketing Andy Goeler said. Noting that Bud’s target audience is 21-49 year olds who spend a lot of time on the Internet, Goeler related it made sense to create this partnership.
“One thing that’s enticing to us — is that when you’re on the Internet you can be a little bit more irreverent, have a little bit more fun, if you would, versus traditional television advertising,” Goeler added. “The other thing, obviously, is the viral nature of this stuff. If you do good work, it gets passed around and consumers look for it, and they want to be communicated to in this format. So it’s a very powerful marketing tool, again, versus traditional TV.”
With a strong following and their company logo opening each piece they produce, the Spiridellis brothers are careful to develop work they believe in.
“Our brand is on the line, too, so it creates a whole different dynamic because, for us, the most important thing is our fan base and we’re not going to make anything unless we think we can make it funny and that’s why we have probably turned down two dozen corporate gigs already because the brands don’t work. It’s hard to make people laugh when you got to sell dish soap,” Spiridellis shared. However, with Budweiser’s iconic status and history of entertaining advertising, he joked that if they can’t make people laugh with Budweiser, they couldn’t tickle an audience’s funny bone with any corporate client.
