Budweiser Marketing Lime-A-Rita Solely To Women

Budweiser’s Lime-A-Rita is a strange product. It’s a fruit-flavored malt beverage from a company known for its beer-like substances, and the product’s name implies margaritas, but it contains neither beer nor tequila. As malt beverage sales are falling, though, Budweiser parent AB InBev is going to market the Lime-A-Rita line solely to women.

Why market the product to women? Fruit-flavored malt beverages are in the traditionally “feminine” alcoholic drink category to begin with. Actual cocktails designed for and marketed specifically to women have been successful in the past: You may remember the Skinnygirl line of cocktails, which focused on margaritas.

Budweiser’s insight after studying its customers and bringing in an all-female team to create the ad campaign, though, was that women like margaritas and have warm memories associated with them.

“By using the existing strength we have with female drinkers, we are poised to exclusively speak to women and bring more margarita moments to their lives,” the brand’s (female) Senior Director explained in a statement. “We did our homework to understand the special connection female drinkers have with margaritas, and uncovered insights on the role that Lime-A-Rita plays in bringing women together.”

Most of my best margarita- and tequila-related memories are more about the people I was spending time with, but it is nice to see a booze ad about female bonding.

In addition to the traditional Lime-A-Rita and Straw-Ber-Ita, new additions to the line will be the Grape-A-Rita, summer seasonal offering Peach-A-Rita, and the regional Orange-A-Rita.

(via Fortune: autoplay video at that link)

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