2025 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

The agency’s challenge was to seize a historic hockey moment to drive up awareness and brand love for Budweiser Zero.

As an official partner of the NHL, Budweiser has long held a significant place in Canadian hockey culture. The brand has had their finger on the pulse of hockey fans over the years, amplifying what they love most about the game with everything from goal-synced Red Lights at home, to a recent campaign weeding out the excuses that get in the way of enjoying hockey together.

With such a stellar track record, it’s clear the King of Beers and hockey were a natural pairing. But how do you extend this partnership to Budweiser zero — a non-alcoholic beer looking for a way to meaningfully tap into hockey to connect with our target and earn their love? Lucky for the agnecy, the hockey gods came through with the perfect opportunity, and they were ready to seize it. They were coming up on the biggest moment in hockey of the last 20 years — the storied NHL goal record was about to be broken.

For their core target audience of men LDA - 45, this was a big event that was flooding social feeds, topping subreddits, and preoccupying panels on TV and sports radio. This was without question their window, but the agnecy had to approach it with a singular focus on heroing the zero. So while everyone joined the same conversation around the record breaking goal itself, Budweiser ZERO shined the light on the goals that remained empty.

More than any other sport, hockey fans appreciate the unsung heroes of the game.

The idea was “The Kings of Zero”: An Unexpected, Creator-Led Tribute to Hockey's Greatest Goal Scorer, Courtesy of the Few Men Who Stopped Him.

To deliver a tribute worthy of hockey's passionate fanbase and the record-breaking star they were celebrating, they went straight to the 28 goalies who heroically survived his onslaught. The brand paid tribute to them with a personalized “King of Zero” can bearing their name and they, in turn, paid tribute to him, sharing their cans and stories and sparking a fan and media frenzy in the process.

“The Kings of Zero” defied category norms with its athlete-driven storytelling and faithful dramatization of the product truth. Designed with hockey fans in mind, it turned a milestone into a shareable, unforgettable moment. A breakthrough idea with staying power — and Zero compromise.

As Ovechkin closed in on Gretzky’s record, the pressure was on to get cans in the hands of our goalies. They finalized and packaged each goalie’s can as they reached within 10 goals of the record, and shipped them when they were 3 goals away.

With the custom cans in the hands of the goalies, the agency leveraged the brand’s socials to spread the message. They launched with the goalie whose saves against Ovechkin were the most impressive — Curtis Joseph, AKA 'Cujo'. Treating the 28 goalies as our creators and media vehicle, they introduced Budweiser ZERO to a broad fanbase. The chorus of social conversation took off as hockey influencers and creators saw the novel way the brand was celebrating Ovechkin and ran with it.

The campaign's authenticity resonated with hockey fans, and garnered significant goodwill and enthusiasm from the NHL and NHL Alumni association, whose support expanded the campaign's reach even further.

Strategic planning made a significant contribution to this game-changing campaign in more ways than one. First, it took note of the evolving role of hockey fans. Both stat and story obsessed, hockey fans are more than spectators; they want to be part of the show. Giving them a central role in the social campaign capitalized on their appetite to share their perspective through social media and rack up the views, listens, and likes.

Second, and most important, strategic planning alongside creative helped shape a tribute that sat at the intersection of what is uniquely ownable to Budweiser Zero, and uniquely relevant to passionate hockey fans: the focus on the unsung heroes of “zero”.

By all metrics, “The Kings of Zero” was a ground breaking, record setting campaign. The campaign achieved an engagement rate of 2.54% on social, smashing their benchmark of 0.31%. (Budweiser engagement rate – Jan 1 to Mar 31, 2025)

It garnered 95% positive and neutral social sentiment, exceeding their benchmark of 72%. (Budweiser sentiment – Jan 1 to Mar 31, 2025), drove a record-setting volume of social conversation, with 70K mentions — making it the most talked about campaign in Labatt history.

“The Kings of Zero” achieved 1.14 Billion total campaign impressions and 13,873,599 paid media impressions.

Credits

Executive Creative Director / Partner, Dave Douglass, Anomaly
Group Creative Director, Neil Blewitt, Anomaly
Jr. Art Director, Chris Stapleton, Anomaly
Jr. Writer, Liam Haggarty, Anomaly
CEO, Candace Borland, Anomaly
Managing Director, Matt Holton, Anomaly
Group Business Director, Joachim Holmgren, Anomaly
Account Director, Dominic Neukom, Anomaly
Group Social Director, Matt Stasoff, Anomaly
Head of Production, Marie-Pierre Toure, Anomaly
Agency Producer, Jacklyn Bonsignore, Anomaly
Head of Design, Shawn Lambino, Anomaly
Design Director, Lucas Young, Anomaly

Production Company, Unreasonable Studios
Executive Producer, Annya Williams, Unreasonable Studios
Editing Company, Unreasonable Studios
Editor, Martin Klapperbein, Unreasonable Studios

Head of Mainstream Brands, Patrick Heembrock, Labatt Breweries of Canada

Media Agency, Starcom
PR Agency, Veritas