While listening to the radio, I caught a new Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” radio spot. These always make me chuckle, so when I got home I Googled “real men of genius.” In the number one spot is a Web site that promises all of the ads for download so I head on over.

Dead end. Anheuser-Busch has sent this cease and desist letter to the owner of the site. Now the site has anti-Bud Light messages, etc.

Why, you real men of genius, would you ever want to threaten legal action to someone who is helping you spread your brand? Sure enough, in the Google search #3 is the official Bud Light site. It does have a dozen or so of the spots, but not nearly the complete collection reportedly on the site that nearly everyone looking for the spots will visit (I read on another site – Google result #2, a blog – that the spots were added to the AB site to raise their Google ranking).

If ever you want to copy, redistribute, post, etc., a spot that I’ve created, please do! Help me save money by saving the expense of buying media or bandwidth to spread the word. If you are feeling really saucy, make a parody. That’ll help iconize the campaign which in the end, helps my brand. Sure, there might be exceptions….

The beauty of social media is allowing the popular to become more popular by sharing it with others. If an ad that you create becomes so popular that people want to share it with others, that’s a great, great thing. AB, you are throwing away a tremendous opportunity.

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