April 25, 2024

DealBook: Anheuser- Busch Reaches Deal With Antitrust Regulators

Grupo Modelo makes Corona.Matt Rourke/Associated PressGrupo Modelo makes Corona.

11:36 a.m. | Updated

Anheuser-Busch InBev announced on Friday that it had received government approval for for its $20.1 billion deal to buy control of Grupo Modelo, the maker of Corona beer.

The Obama administration sued on Jan. 31 to block the takeover, arguing that the deal would give Anheuser-Busch InBev too much control over the American beer market, potentially reducing choices.

The agreement filed with the court on Friday resolves the regulatory concerns. Under the deal, Constellations Brands will pay about $5 billion to buy Anheuser Busch InBev’s 50 percent stake in Crown Imports, the company that imports Corona into the United States, as well as some breweries and operations. Constellation, one of the world’s largest wine companies, already owns half of Crown alongside Modelo.

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The Mexican Competition Commission approved the revised transaction in early April, the companies said.

Analysts have largely expected Anheuser-Busch InBev and the Justice Department to reach an accord on reasonable terms. The company has long regarded holding on to the United States rights to Corona and other brands less important than keeping control of Modelo’s operations elsewhere.

Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewing company, was created in 2008 through the $52 billion merger of Anheuser-Busch and the Belgian-Brazilian brewer InBev. The proposed $20.1 billion deal for Grupo Modelo would be the second-largest takeover in the beer industry after that merger, according to Thomson Reuters.

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/anheuser-busch-reaches-deal-with-antitrust-regulators/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Media Decoder Blog: Replaying Super Bowl Ads’ Effectiveness

Given that Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest day of the year for advertising as well as for football, Madison Avenue waits each year after the game with bated breath for the results of the myriad analyses, polls and surveys of consumer responses to the commercials.

What follows is a roundup of some of the information and data released on Monday and Tuesday, after the conclusion of Super Bowl XLVII.

AddThis: AddThis, a data company, tracks what is called brand lift, the difference between online conversations about sponsors on Super Bowl Sunday and the online conversations about them on six previous Sundays.

The sponsor that enjoyed the largest brand lift, up 634 percent, was Anheuser-Busch, part of Anheuser-Busch InBev, which was the exclusive beer sponsor of the game with six commercials. GoDaddy, with two commercials in the game, followed closely behind, with a brand lift of 626 percent.

The sponsor with the lowest brand lift was the Chrysler Group, according to AddThis, with a decline of 35 percent. That may be attributed to the fact that the company ran two commercials for its Jeep and Ram brands but none for the Chrysler brand.

Anheuser-Busch: One of the six commercials Anheuser-Busch ran was a warmly sentimental spot about a Clydesdale and its trainer. When the company offered an online preview of the commercial last week, it asked for suggestions in social media like Facebook and Twitter for a name for a foal that appears in the spot.

The name chosen, the company said, after it received more than 60,000 comments and direct messages, was Hope.

Coca-Cola: The centerpiece of the Coca-Cola Company’s Super Bowl Sunday was a promotion on a Web site, cokechase.com, where consumers could vote to determine which of three groups of thirsty characters competing for a cold Coke in the desert would win the prize. (The winners: showgirls.)

The company said the total number of fan engagements with the campaign – on the special Web site and YouTube – exceeded 11 million, more than projected. And more than 86,000 mentions of the campaign were tracked in social media like Twitter.

The commercial that ran after the game ended on Sunday night, revealing the showgirls’ victory, will be repeated on Wednesday and Thursday on Fox during “American Idol,” which Coca-Cola sponsors. An additional commercial, featuring a character named Vincent who originally had only a small part in the campaign, is to be shown on cable channels this week, the company said.

Dachis Group: The Budweiser commercial about the Clydesdale finished first among the Super Bowl spots in so-called content virality, according to data from the Dachis Group, which specializes in social marketing. That spot generated 310,000 “likes” and shares in social media, the company said, about double the second-place finisher, the Bud Light brand also sold by Anheuser-Busch.

The game sponsor with the most positive conversations in social media, the Dachis Group said, was Pepsi-Cola, attributing that to the brand’s sponsorship of the halftime show. The game sponsor with the most negative conversations, the company said, was GoDaddy, attributing that to the first of the brand’s two commercials in the game, which featured a lengthy kiss between the supermodel Bar Refaeli and an actor, Jesse Heiman, portraying a nerd.

(GoDaddy said in a statement that it was pleased with the response to both its commercials because Monday was the “biggest sales day in company history” – “not just in relation to the Super Bowl” but the “biggest ever.”)

Kantar Media: The highest-rated commercial, according to data from the Kantar Media division of WPP, was not from a marketer but rather from CBS, the network that broadcast the game.

The commercial, promoting the CBS series “Person of Interest,” came at 10:31 p.m., at the two-minute warning at the end of the game. (That was also the case for the highest-rated commercial in the Kantar Media data for the Super Bowl last year.)

CBS ran 42 promotions during Super Bowl XLVII, Kantar Media reported; the network broadcasting the game always includes a hefty load of spots to promote its own shows.

The highest-rated commercial from a marketer, according to Kantar Media, was for Samsung Mobile, which ran just before the “Person of Interest” promotion, at 10:29 p.m.

Frank N. Magid Associates: The company teamed with React Labs on Sunday night for what it calls its Magid Advertising Performance research, asking consumers which commercials engaged them and generated buying intent.

The top commercial in the game, according to Magid, was the Budweiser spot, and the bottom commercial was one of two for Subway, which promoted a special “February” sandwich sale.

TiVo: The TiVo Research and Analytics division of TiVo, the digital video recorder company, said that a commercial for Taco Bell was the “most engaging” of the game, according to its data, compiled in 30,000 households with TiVo service.

The most engaging moment in the Super Bowl, however, was a play in the game (the final whistle) rather than a commercial, TiVo reported. In some previous years, a commercial turned out to be played back more in TiVo households being surveyed than any part of the game.

Visible Measures: According to the True Reach data from Visible Measures – gauging the performance of video clips released by Super Bowl sponsors as well as clips uploaded by consumers across the Web – the most-watched commercial of Super Bowl XLVII was a spot for the Toyota RAV4 featuring the comedian Kaley Cuoco as a modern-day genie with an attitude.

The Toyota RAV4 video had 16.3 million True Reach views as of Monday, Visible Measures reported, more than 4 million views ahead of No. 2, a commercial for the new Mercedes-Benz CLA that featured Willem Dafoe, Usher and Kate Upton.

The ranking of the top videos on the Visible Measures list may change, the company said, because about half the overall views for Super Bowl spots take place after the game. Last year, when there were more than 400 million total video views, more than 180 million took place through the Thursday after the game.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/replaying-super-bowl-ads-effectiveness/?partner=rss&emc=rss