NFTs Go Mainstream as Bud Light Features Nouns NFT in SuperBowl Ad

Giant American brewing company Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light will feature the “Noun glasses” NFTs in an ad that will air during Super Bowl LVI as part of its partnership with Nouns DAO. As for the compensation, Bud Light received a $394K Nouns NFT in mid-January—and used it as its Twitter profile picture for some time.

Bud Light Super Bowl Ad to Feature NFTs

On Monday, Bud Light released an ad, titled “Zero in the Way of Possibility,” that is expected to air during Super Bowl LVI. The ad presents Bud Light Next, the brand’s latest beverage, and also features NFTs from the Nouns NFT, a generative NFT project on the Ethereum blockchain.

The Nouns NFTs are 32×32 pixel avatars based on people, places, and things. The project is run by the Nouns DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. It is open-source and governed by a Creative Commons CC0 “No Rights Reserved” license, which means anyone can freely use its trademark.

In January, the Nouns Foundation purchased a beer-themed Nouns NFT (Noun 179) for 127 ETH (about $394,000) and gave it to Bud Light after the DAO voted on a proposal, which successfully passed. Notably, the proposal didn’t make any mention of Bud Light at the time. It read:

“In exchange for one Noun from Nouns DAO, a prominent beverage company will include Noun glasses in a 2022 Super Bowl commercial. Once the Noun is received, this brand will also change their Twitter avatar to feature Noun glasses and intends to allow holders of the brand’s own NFT to collectively vote with their Noun on future governance proposals.”

Budweiser has been exploring NFTs for some time now. The brand first dabbled in the space last August, when it changed its Twitter avatar to a Tom Sachs Rocket Factory NFT. Budweiser also launched its own Budweiser-themed NFTs in November, which is touted to have future benefits.

In late January, Bud Light also launched an NFT project that features 12,722 unique tokens selling for $399 a piece. The Super Bowl ad features imagery from this collection too. 

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How NFTs and the Creator Economy Made Crypto Mainstream

The Super Bowl, the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), is one of the most-viewed sports events in the world. The game was watched by 91.6 million people in 2021, hitting a 15-year low rating. Still, it was the most-watched television program of the year.

This massive audience gives the Super Bowl a special marketing status, with companies willing to pay millions of dollars for a 30-second ad slot. For perspective, the average cost for ad space during the Super Bowl LV in 2021 reached $5.6 million for a 30-second slot. 

Furthermore, this also shows that crypto adoption has almost gone mainstream, with NFTs accounting for a huge part of that success. That is because NFTs enable artists and companies to dabble into the space without a purely financial reason — e.g. buying Bitcoin for the long run, which comes with some regulatory headaches. 

In a sense, NFTs are exceptionally powerful as they brought an element of uniqueness to the digital world for the first time in the history of the internet. They enable the creator community, which is consisted of over 50 million individuals from around the globe, to create digital arts without having to worry about their works being unauthorizedly reproduced. 

What do you think about NFTs? Are they a technological breakthrough or a fad? Let us know in the comments below.