beer

A King's Ransom? The King of Beers Offers $1M To Sweepstakes Winner


As sweepstakes prizes go, this one is huge -- and fairly rare.

Budweiser, the “King of Beers,” will award a $1 million check to one lucky consumer so that he, she or they can “Live Like a King.”

“In sweepstakes, a million-dollar prize or a combination of prizes that total a million happens usually a few times a year,” points out Craig McDaniel, founder and president of Sweepstakes Today, a website that compiles sweepstakes offers for consumers.  Another example, he says, is HGTV’s  Dream Home Giveaway, which has now been giving away houses and cars for more than a quarter century.

McDaniel says that “Live Like a King” represents the largest prize he can recall from Anheuser-Busch, although the company, in a statement to Marketing Daily, would only say that “this is one of Budweiser's largest monetary prizes in recent history.”

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And, while McDaniel says to “expect to see TV commercials, which is common for very big prizes,” Budweiser said its promotional efforts would only involve in-store packaging, trade marketing materials, email marketing, a special website, and posts on social media like Twitter and Facebook.

 “Live Like a King” may also be the culmination of a sweepstakes boom from beer marketers that started when COVID-19 caused a “budget shift” due to the lack of ad opportunities in live sports, according to McDaniel.

Since the start of the pandemic, McDaniel said, Anheuser-Busch has offered more sweepstakes promotions than any other Fortune 500 company, with Molson Coors also showing a significant increase.

So how does a consumer get to “Live Like a King?”

The six-week sweepstakes, running through Feb. 20, involves two steps:

1. Find one of 10,000 specially labeled gold Budweiser cans hidden away in 24-pack cartons. Or just print a version of the label from the web.  

2. Post a photo of the can or label on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter with required tag (@budweiserUSA) and hashtags (#LiveLikeAKing and  #Sweepstakes).

Oh, yes, there’s a third step: 3. Cross your fingers.

 

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