Dive Brief:

• Bud Light has teamed up with musician Post Malone on a time-limited fashion collection, according to a press release shared with Marketing Dive. The line includes a jacket, jeans t-shirts, hoodies and sweatpants that feature lyrics from the rapper's upcoming album and imagery from the AB InBev brand.
• Post Malone and his creative team designed the clothes, which go on sale today (Aug. 5) exclusively on his website. To promote the e-commerce offering, Bud Light is running a pop-up shop in New York that is open Aug. 4-5. The activation involves a partnership between the brand, the musician and Vice's agency Virtue. 
• Post Malone is also performing on Bud Light's Dive Bar Tour, a tour of small shows that AB InBev sponsors. Fans can enter to win tickets in an online sweepstakes.

Dive Insight:

Bud Light is looking to connect with consumers in a busy marketplace where there are thousands of beers to choose from, at a time when many young people opt for non-alcoholic drinks. Millennials, a key demographic for beer brands, are often making healthier choices and abstaining from alcohol, so the big beer marketers are looking for ways to target this audience and get them to crack open a beer.

Bud Light is getting credibility and selling a kind of coolness among fans by teaming with Post Malone, whose last album "Beerbongs & Bentleys" went triple-platinum. By partnering with a best-selling artist on a line of merchandise, as well as sponsored concerts, the brand can get in front of consumers in a more authentic way, by delivering content — whether in the form of concerts and sweatpants — without just trying to sell beer. 

Over the past few years, launching branded apparel collections has been a frequent marketing tactic of many CPG and QSR marketers, including other beer brands, snack brands like Cheetos and Yum Brands heavyweights Taco Bell and KFC. These collections look to engage millennial and Gen Z consumers with their limited availability and social media-readiness while providing marketers with data about customers that they can use to support product development and future marketing programs. 

Bud Light's collaboration with Post Malone is far from AB InBev's only effort to win over millennials and drinking age Gen Zers. Anheuser-Busch recently got into esports — a space which has been attracting millennials and Gen Zers alike — by filing trademarks for the phrases "The Official Beer of Esports," "The Official Beer of Gamers" and "The Official Beer of Gaming" with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

AB InBev competitor Coors Light recently launched a rebranding campaign targeting millennials and Gen Zers who seek a break from the "always-on" world. The "Made to Chill" effort targets this audience with spots that promote moments not generally associated with drinking beer, and pitches Coors Light as "the official beer of being done wearing a bra" and "official beer of drinking in the shower," among other things.