Bud.TV may be a marketing venture at heart, but it is marketing sotto voce. The shows’ plots won’t revolve around the quest for the perfect beer and a beautiful woman to share it with. Characters won’t declaim the virtues of Budweiser’s freshness at every opportunity. The site won’t be cluttered with banner ads. Anheuser-Busch executives are banking on a more subtle connection. Attach a brand name to something cool, something entertaining, and that elusive young man (and to a lesser extent, young woman) may check out Bud.TV’s offerings again and again, send them along to friends, even take a stab at creating his own mini-film for the site.
So is it really that great? Um, we’ve got no idea. Talk to us again, Bud, when you don’t have an onerous registration system — requiring our name, e-mail address, and cell number, and offering the always-inspiring instruction “please enter your first and last name as it appears on an I.D., like a driver’s license” — and when you have site navigation that allows us to actually, you know, find some of this exciting programming, and we’ll be happy to take a look.
If you need us in the meantime, we’ll be having a Heineken.
