beverages

A-B Launches Digital Ad For Oculto

Anheuser-Busch has launched a digital ad for its new beverage brand Oculto, a lager blended with beer aged on tequila barrel staves.

The 30-second video highlights the brand’s core elements: intrigue, mystery, seduction and spontaneous nights out with friends. The beverage’s name, Oculto, means “hidden” or “waiting to be found” in Spanish.

The marketing strategy to reach Oculto’s target is to focus primarily on social, digital and experiential, says John Steed, marketing director, Anheuser-Busch InBev.

“Oculto is for millennials who seek to maximize every experience and view unique, exciting memories made with friends as the ultimate social currency,” Steed tells . “These drinkers are often also drinking other premium beverages.”

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Marketing aims to reach the target where they are: “in the clubs and on Instagram, Twitter and Tinder. Everything we do is designed to drive Instagrammable and share-worthy moments,” Steed says.

In the three weeks since the product launched, A-B has seen more than 13,000 organic posts about the brand using the hashtag #Oculto on Instagram, he says. Consumers are also encouraged to use the hashtag #MakeSecrets, further defining the Oculto brand persona, he says.

Experiential elements are focused in Miami and include both traditional and disruptive OOH, geotargeted social advertising and experiential on-premise events. 

The digital ad “epitomizes the seduction and intrigue of the brand highlighting unforgettable nights out,” Steed says. “The visuals are meant to inspire curiosity around the various vignettes of secrets being made throughout the video.”

“The spot is a dreamy, seductive invitation to put on the mask and have an Oculto kind of night,” he says. “We catch passing glimpses of a masked woman who wants us to follow her into a night where we’re the strangers, lured by what awaits us around the next corner.”

The video was directed by Melina Matsoukas, who is known for her music video work with artists including Rihanna’s “We Found Love.”

The music used in the spot is the classic "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" by soul music pioneer and legend Sam Cooke.

“It was picked for its effortless cool and the way it balanced the party vibe in the visuals,” Steed says. “We chose to use something seductive and unexpected. This is not your typical lager and the music needed to reflect that spirit.”

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