Who Drinks Bud, and Why?

Deep dive understanding

We built the Valuegraphics Database by analyzing more than 500,000 surveys from all around the world. One question we asked all those people was “What are your favorite brands?”

If enough people mention a brand we can dive deep into the rest of the data and see what those folks have in common. It’s not as accurate as a custom Valuegraphics Profile that we would do for a client. But still, it can be really cool.

Budweiser came up a lot in the USA. And since it is May, and summer is nearly upon us, we thought we’d poke around in the 436 metrics we have in the global database and see which ones apply to Budweiser fans. After all there is no pandemic restriction against having a BBQ in your own backyard and crushing a beer or four while you do it.

Two Types of Workaholic Archetypes for Budweiser

Our database can be broken up into 15 archetypes that more or less cover everyone on earth. The Workaholics are just one of those 15, and they will be familiar to anyone who read my last book.

I’ll be introducing you to all 15 archetypes in my new book, which I’m fully stressed out about because the first draft is due pretty much right now, and I’m not even close to being done. Damn this beer is going down nice though!

Family-Driven Workaholics

Family-Driven Workaholics are driven to work crazy-long hours because of their family. They want to do everything they can to make sure their family is safe and secure. But why are they attracted to Budweiser?

We can’t know for sure unless Budweiser (or some other beer company) hires us to do a full-on custom profiling. But there is a clue in the data we already have: they place an enormous amount of importance on the value of Leisure, which is super-rare. Workaholics don’t generally give two-hoots about Leisure because it takes away from their time at work. But these particular Bud-chugging family-focused workaholics are motivated to let their hair down once in a while, and when they do, they want a Bud.

What’s interesting is that Workaholics are usually super-focused on how everyone else perceives them. Values like Social Standing, Ambition, and Upward Mobility are generally a really big deal. With a custom profiling, we’d be able to tell precisely what it is about the Budweiser brand that triggers those values for these people, enough for them to say “Make mine a Bud.”

Life-Driven Workaholics

Life-Driven Workaholics have shown up many times before too, but in this case, there is a unique twist. Normally these people are working so hard to reach some enormous life goal they are chasing: they want to take a year off and work on a Ph.D., or they want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, or buy a second home…you get the picture.

Here’s the twist: the big goal that the Budweiser Life-Driven Workaholics have is…well…they want to be social. They work really long and hard because they like to drink. Go figure.

What values make this group unique? It’s a two-for-one observation here: we do NOT see Social Standing in their profile, as we would in a more run-of-the-mill workaholic profile. Instead, we see a doubling-down on some form of being with other people, which might be the infrequently-spotted Friendship value. This value is super-rare, so when it shows up we pay attention.

Maybe I’ve had three beers at this point, and maybe I haven’t. But I’m feeling very creative at the moment, so if I was the copywriter assigned to sketch out a TV commercial for this group, you know what I’d do? I’d focus on how they are different. “You guys have everyone fooled don’t you? They think you are focused on work, buttoned-down, your eyes on the prize. But we know you. Meeting your quarterly objectives isn’t as important as meeting your friends. When your boss talks about networking you’re thinking about working the volleyball net on the beach next weekend. We got you. This Bud’s for you.”

This is about as broad a paintbrush as I’ve ever used to tell a story about the Valuegraphics of a specific brand. So please remember that this is based solely on the information that we happened to have lying around. A real-life Valuegraphics profile for Budweiser fans would identify the secret consumer-behavior-recipe: exactly which of the 56 core human values, combined in precisely what amounts, make up the OS for this target audience.