Anheuser-Busch InBev Scales Creative Quality

Goal: Scale Creative Review & Boost Compliance‍

AB InBev, the world’s largest brewer, publishes and promotes content on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to build awareness, interest and intent for its brands. AB InBev’s content production operation is extremely large, with more than 700 marketers creating thousands of pieces of content each month to promote more than 500 brands worldwide. 

“We produce a lot of content, and my goal is to improve it,” said Nandus du Plessis, Head of Content Excellence for AB InBev Global. “I have to find out what’s working best with consumers and scale it around the world.”

Before working with CreativeX, AB InBev undertook manual content reviews, with individual team members checking to see whether a piece of creative met the company’s digital creative guidelines, developed in partnership with Facebook to increase content performance. For example, does the creative show the brand within the first three seconds? Is one of the brand’s main usage occasions (e.g. sports, music) shown? The process was time-consuming and inherently limited in scope, with a team of six people spending six months to evaluate 1,000 pieces of content for a single brand.‍

Strategy: Leverage Creative X’ Creative Governance Technology to Scale Creative Review‍

AB InBev decided to partner with CreativeX and use the company’s Creative Excellence tracking technology to scale and automate its creative review process. CreativeX programmed AB InBev’s criteria into their Creative Governance software, building artificial intelligence-powered models to recognize whether each guideline had been met. 

AB InBev connected its Facebook channels to CreativeX directly, so CreativeX could track and measure both historical content as well as any new content being created.In a matter of days, CreativeX analyzed more than 1,000 pieces of content across multiple brands and markets, flagging each instance when a creative guideline had not been followed, so it would be easy for marketers on the ground to fix. 

CreativeX also tracked overall performance by brand and market, sharing top-line results in an easy-to-use dashboard.At the outset, AB InBev found that only 20% of creative assets adhered to all seven criteria, and only 4% of media budget went to promoting those assets.‍

Results: AB InBev Now Tracks 10X More Assets and Boosted Content Excellence By 100% ‍

CreativeX quickly helped AB InBev ramp up to tracking more than 1,000 pieces of content each month, a ten-fold increase from the amount of content previously tracked. “What CreativeX enables our brands to do is to have visibility into what they’re doing, in a world where you’re creating more content than ever before.” 

AB InBev now uses CreativeX technology to review all image and video content pre-flight, ensuring only the strongest creative makes it to market or has budget put behind it. Since CreativeX makes it easy for on-the-ground marketers to see and fix their creative, global Creative Excellence has jumped by 100% since using CreativeX.