Most beer ads of the 1990s sold the same things: parties, sports, attractive people. The most famous beer ad of the era sold a greeting between friends, and it wasn’t invented by an ad agency at all.
A short film
In the late 1990s Charles Stone III, an up-and-coming director who wanted to prove to Hollywood he could tell a story, made a short film called “True.” It starred Stone and several of his childhood friends, sitting around doing nothing much and calling each other on the phone. Their greeting was an elongated, open-mouthed “Whassup?” that each friend in turn picked up and yelled back.
The film had no punchline in the usual sense. It played the independent film festival circuit, and bootleg VHS copies passed from friend to friend as a party tape.
The pitch
In 1999 Vinny Warren, a 32-year-old Irish-born creative director at DDB Chicago, Budweiser’s agency, was shown a grainy, degraded copy. He thought it was brilliant, even though, as he later put it, there was “no discernible joke.” The feeling it captured, a group of friends with their own private language, felt irresistible.
In October 1999, with Anheuser-Busch executives in town for one night, Warren and the DDB team pitched it in a hotel bar. Anheuser-Busch licensed the idea from the production company and hired Stone to direct the commercials, with his friends playing themselves.
On air
The first “Whassup?” spot aired during Monday Night Football on December 20, 1999. Anheuser-Busch produced dozens of ads before each Super Bowl and tested them for likability; “Whassup?” made the cut, and it aired during Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000.
The ad was everywhere almost instantly. People yelled “Whassup?” at each other in offices, bars and school hallways. It was parodied in the 2000 film Scary Movie, and a British dance act, Da Muttz, turned it into a top-20 single in the U.K.
Awards
“Whassup?” won the Grand Prix in the film category at the 2000 Cannes Lions festival and the Grand Clio award, and it was inducted into the CLIO Hall of Fame in May 2006.
Why it worked
- It was real. The cast were actual friends, and the greeting was one they genuinely used, which gave the ad an authenticity scripted comedy rarely has.
- It was easy to copy. Anyone could do the “Whassup?” and doing it spread the ad.
- It sold friendship, not beer. Budweiser became the drink in the hands of a group of friends having fun, the positioning every beer brand wants.
- It trusted an outside voice. The agency’s best move was recognizing something good that already existed and bringing its creator along.
Sequels and revivals
Budweiser made sequels, including “Whassup Girlfriend” in 2000 and two more spots for Super Bowl XXXV in 2001, and the campaign ran until 2002. Stone reunited the cast for a web video in 2008, and in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Budweiser revived the idea as “Checking in, that’s Whassup,” encouraging people to call their friends.