This Bud.TV’s for you… but not you

Beer.  We all love it, but for some of us, it is a forbidden love – often, because we’re just too young to drink it.  But too young to WATCH it?  That might be a little much…  Still, in age of experiential niche marketing, laws must be abided by in creating that experience,  this translates into a challenge for marketers – a challenge that I think is very well illustrated by Anheuser-Busch’s struggles with the interesting but as yet unsucessful, Bud.TV.

You see that link up there at the end of the last paragraph?  Go ahead, click on it.  Indulge me.  If you’re not already a member (and judging by traffic to the site, you likely aren’t) you’re about to enter a wonderful world of registration, verification and security questions.  Sorry, did I say wonderful?  As was pointed out in an article posted yesterday at Advertising Age’s portal, while one great American Bush remains fully entrenched in their position, another Busch is “fading” from theirs – and for good reason.

According to Jeremy Mullman’s article, Bud.TV launched with hopes of attracting 2-3 million unique visitors a month to its online video content offering – and why shouldn’t they?  Budweiser has consistently put out some of the most entertaining beer advertising in the US for as long as I can remember.  Even when they’re not funny or provacative, they’ve got those great Clydesdales!  However, after attracting only around 152,000 uniques in March of 07, they’re scaling back their plans to the point that August Busch IV himself (fantastic name) announced to the industry this week that we should expect to see the property “fade” in the second half of this year.

Now this post could go on to talk about how Bud.TV should stick to their guns and how the market for niche video portals is the market of the future (because it is), but today I’m feeling soft, so I want to empathize.  As I mentioned up top, and as Ad Age also points out, it is the barrier to entry which has seemed to really hurt Bud.TV.  Even sadder is that it was Anheuser-Busch’s commitment to doing things properly which might lead to this innovative experiential video portal’s demise.

While many brewers sites will simply ask you to indicate through a pull-down menu what your year of birth might be, Bud.TV actually authenticates your claim through official government records searches – a highly responsible choice.  And a time consuming one for users.  So while they are being good corporate citizens by keeping the kiddies out (kiddies who likely would’ve clamoured to the site to see some bikini-clad Bud beauties) they are also frustrating their users who are of the age of majority who are perhaps just as eager to see one of Bud’s video vixens.  The obvious problem is that while responsibly alienating the inappropriate audience, they’re also turning away the fickle and less persistent members of their legal audience as they grow tired of jumping through online hoops to get what they want.  Of course, killing two audiences with one sign in, is never a good thing.  Compounding the problem is that you can find hot girls on YouTube and you don’t have to show ID.  This is a sad reality if, like me, you would love to see a site like Bud.TV thrive and prove that there is a place for a collection of more highly-targeted video-based portals that cater to a particular lifestyle or interest.  **Sigh**
So chalk this set back up to an unfortunate challenge in niche marketing.  While YouTube has set the standard for video streaming portals, its security measures are not governed by the same laws and statutes that Anheuser-Busch must abide by.  So I’ll bid a premature adieu to Bud.TV but hope that niche marketers remain resilient – while there may be some roadblocks to reaching your audience with an innovative content experience, there’s got to be clever ways to get around them.  Sadly, at least for now, it seems to be a roadblock that even the mighty Clydesdales can’t quite topple.

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