ABInBev

Branding the world’s leading brewer.

When international brewing company InBev acquired famous North American brewer Anheuser-Busch in July 2008, it created Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s leading brewer and a global top-five consumer product company.

FutureBrand was chosen to develop the strategic positioning and visual identity for this new organization and to help define the vision, values and personality that would launch the newly created brand boldly into the future.

At FutureBrand we build brands that propel our clients forward. For Anheuser-Busch InBev, our vision was to go beyond strategic positioning and create an identity that would signal AB InBev’s position as a global top-five consumer product company while demonstrating its individuality, drive and authenticity. The new brand should blend the original companies’ two strong histories with Anheuser-Busch InBev’s forward-looking strategy and solid outlook, to inspire the confidence of all its stakeholders.

Using this platform to inform our strategy, FutureBrand began creating a brand that would be both dynamic and enduring. Working closely with both InBev and Anheuser-Busch, we helped to define the new company’s vision to be “the best beer company in a better world.”

Our challenge was to infuse Anheuser-Busch InBev’s clear objectives with the right mix of its founding companies’ historical values. After in-depth consultation with the future Anheuser-Busch InBev board, we developed a brand framework that blends the best of all these by balancing the efficiency of InBev and the empathy of Anheuser-Busch with the authenticity and ambition of the new company, Anheuser-Busch InBev.

We looked closely at the existing identities of both companies, analyzing the look, feel and values of each brand before carrying out an extensive review of their competitors. This helped our design team to define which aspects of the previous identities should be considered in the development of the new company identity, and gave our strategy team a context to develop a brand framework that would strongly position Anheuser-Busch InBev as the world’s leading brewer and command the global status it deserves.

Having defined a future-focused brand framework that also captured the rich heritage of both companies, we created a design incorporating an American eagle with the predefined AB InBev company name.

Representing strength, agility and focus, the Anheuser-Busch InBev eagle looks forward and upward to reflect the company’s proactive vision, drive and energy. The combination of deep golden colors echoes a rich expertise and heritage in brewing outstanding beer, while the modern and friendly typography serves to pull the visual elements together and signifies the unity of the new organization. This is a brand that communicates a bright and inspirational future while upholding the heritage of its founding companies’ proven success.

FutureBrand created the full visual expression of Anheuser-Busch InBev with identity guidelines defining a logo suite, graphical language, and tone of voice, along with design systems for literature, corporate stationery, signage, internal and external communications, and digital applications.

Delivering the project from brief to rollout within three months, FutureBrand made it possible for the new company’s board to approve the final identity and brand before the acquisition deal closure in November 2008.