Bud Light Seltzer Chief Meme Officer

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Overview

Bud Light Seltzer Chief Meme Officer refers to an online promotional campaign by Anheuser-Busch InBev to hire a “chief meme officer” to help promote the release of its new Bud Light Seltzer on social media. The campaign for hiring a “CMO,” which began in mid-August 2020, was widely reported on by numerous media outlets and discussed across social media platforms.

Background

On August 18th, 2020, Bud Light began posting on its website^[1] and social media accounts about its search for hiring a chief meme officer to create memes and help promote the release of its new hard seltzer line. According to the blog post on Bud Light’s site, the job’s responsibilities include making at least 10 memes per week, and the perks include payment in seltzer, $5,000 per month for three months and the ability to “go into your next job interview with Chief Meme Officer on your resume.”

In Bud Light’s first social media push, the brand tweeted^[2] about the new role on August 18th (seen below), receiving 462 likes, 149 quotes and 88 retweets in roughly one week.

Developments

Online Reactions

Upon announcement of the position, users online widely discussed the event across social media platforms, as well as several media outlets, including Fox Business,^[3] AdWeek,^[4] USA Today^[5] and many others.

On August 18th, 2020, the MoonPie Twitter^[6] responded to the promotion on Bud Light’s account by posting a meme under the original tweet (shown below, left), receiving 136 likes in roughly one week. The following day, Guy Fieri also replied to the tweet^[7] with a meme of his own (shown below, right), receiving 823 likes in six days.

On August 18th, the Instagram^[8] account nochaser promoted the position via sponsored memes (seen below) and received over 9,000 likes in six days. LADbible’s Facebook^[9] page also shared an article about the event on August 21st, receiving over 2,100 comments and 760 likes in roughly four days.

On August 22nd, the website Trill Mag^[10] published an article titled “Why You Shouldn’t Apply To Be Bud Light’s New ‘Chief Meme Officer,’” which discussed the trend of branded memes as advertisements on social media, receiving over 21,700 views in roughly three days.