High-Alcohol Brew Gets Super Bowl Showcase

Anheuser-Busch, the St. Louis-based manufacturer of Budweiser and Bud Light (which supplanted its older brother at the top of the best-selling US beer list in 2001) rolled out a new varient, Bud Light Platinum, on Monday. Naturally, it's planning to kick-start the Platinum marketing offensive during Sunday's Super Bowl. The twist? Bud Light Platinum is a higher-alcohol-content beer that's "aimed at younger, urban drinkers who have abandoned beer for spirits." As such, Platinum will boast 6% alcohol by volume (ABV), dwarfing Bud Light's 4.2% ABV. Traditional "Bud Heavy," aka Budweiser, is 5%. As the Super Bowl's only beer advertiser, football fans will see six Anheuser-Busch commercials during the game, two of which will be for Bud Light Platinum. The Platinum spots will reportedly highlight the new brew's "triple-filtered, smooth finish, top-shelf taste," and will also eschew beer commercials' recently dominant light-hearted, poking-fun-at-drinkers tone, in favor of a more serious, image-conscious approach. Evidently younger, urban drinkers who've switched to hard liquor find it hard to take a joke.