Anheuser-Busch InBev Social Media Marketing Campaign

Anheuser-Busch InBev Social Media Marketing Campaign. The top three company in the world has tips to say about the success of their business. Read on to the success factors and how to achieve them. 

A brief history

Anheuser-Busch InBev started in 1366 as the Den Horen brewery, in Belgium. The company is now a multinational beverage and brewing company, based in Leuven, Belgium. It’s the largest beer producer in the world. The company is a 50/50 joint venture between Belgian-Brazilian beer brewer companies. InBev, an Interbrew S.A. subsidiary and Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc., based in St Louis, Missouri. The company has sales operations on six continents and employs more than 130,000 people worldwide.

Anheuser-Busch InBev Social Media Marketing Campaign

Social media marketing campaign

In 2011 the company created a ‘Social Media Hub’ as its main method of customer service on social media networks.
The Social Media Hub consists of 12 employees who monitor Facebook (1 employee), Twitter (1 employee), YouTube (1 employee), Reddit AMA (1 employee), Pinterest (3 employees) and Instagram (2 employees).
The customers are then taken through a digital solution to solve the problem or answer their questions or concerns.

Social Media Hub team

The Social Media Hub team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To address customer needs quickly and efficiently through digital channels.
The team, who are all fluent English speakers are all based around the world to reflect the time zones. Further, they are aimed to provide quick responses (US teams are based in New York and St Louis).
The teams work together to provide answers for customers which will then be posted on social media networks. Hence, by the brand itself or by members of the team using their own accounts if necessary.

This allows for non-employees to spread the word about how well Anheuser-Busch responds to questions via social media channels. Hence, helping with the awareness of Anheuser-Busch and its products. 
Any member of their teams can use any of their social media accounts that they have access to for this purpose. But only content that is deemed as ‘brand appropriate’ is posted onto these accounts.

Both teams also have offices in South Africa and Mexico however these are not currently being used by them at present and they will be used when they expand into other regions or languages such as French or Spanish in the future.

Cristicism on the Media Hub

While the Social Media Hub is a great idea by Anheuser-Busch InBev, it has also faced some criticism for its lack of engagement with potential customers via social media. It has been said that the responses made by staff are not personal enough and do not give a sense of actual brand personality. This could be because the social media hub team have not been given access to personal accounts and therefore have to use a company one which is run by Anheuser-Busch InBev themselves.

Another criticism is that they are using a ‘one size fits all approach to what customers are saying, rather than looking at each comment/question as an individual thing, even if it is not related to one of their products or services, they still respond to it rather than leaving it unanswered. Also, the fact that they aim to respond within 24 hours has led to some people believing that they are using an automated service rather than an actual person responding to comments.

Future Media hub improvement

This is something that Anheuser-Busch InBev may want to look further into if they want their strategy for social media marketing to be as effective as possible and make more customers aware of their products, especially since this method of customer service is relatively new and other companies are starting to copy this idea from them.