New campaign turns a physical meeting into a Facebook connection
Budweiser is trying to make it easier to make friends -- Facebook friends -- when you're drinking beer.
The company's Brazilian development team has come out with the Buddy Cup, a beer glass with an embedded chip. When two Buddy Cups are clinked together, they automatically send friend requests to the users' Facebook pages.
"Budweiser loves to share in great times with our fans," said Manuel Rangel Machiavello of Budweiser Brazil in an email. "The Buddy Cup brings together the in-bar experience with Facebook, the most used social media channel for our consumers."
According to Budweiser, users scan a bar code on the bottom of the cup and provide information from their Facebook profiles so the cup can connect to their Facebook accounts.
"We did a first pilot event here in Sao Paulo to test the prototype," said Machiavello. "It was an instant success and we had the chance to register users' reactions as well. Lots of friends were made that night. Based on the positive reactions, we are looking at taking this to bigger events in future."
Budweiser's smart beer glass comes on the heels of Google's plans to develop smart eyeglasses.
Google has started distributing the futuristic-looking, wearable computers to developers and early testers, called Explorers. Google glasses are designed to enable users to take pictures and video, send email and post information on social networks like Google+ and Facebook.
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