America the beautiful will become "America the beer-tiful" this year, when Budweiser rolls out a new branding campaign that temporarily changes the name of its iconic lager to "America."
Really.
The St. Louis company, which is owned by the Belgian AB-InBev, filed for and was granted a label change with the Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau earlier this year for both bottles and cans. The news was picked up by Ad Age Tuesday, which reports the campaign will run May 23 through November's election and be accompanied by a TV spot boasting the slogan "America is in your hands."
"We thought nothing was more iconic than Budweiser and nothing was more iconic than America," Tosh Hall, creative director at the company's branding firm JKR, told Fast Co. Design.
No, this is not an episode of Saturday Night Live -- soon you will literally be able drink in the great US of A. Here's a list of all the overtly patriotic slogans will be written on the label, which reads more like a dollar bill than an explanation of beer.
America
Plain and simple folks.
E Pluribus Unum
Latin for "out of many, one," a saying you may also recognize from the American seal.
Indivisible Since 1776
I pledge allegiance to the beer of the United States of ... wait a minute...
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
In fact, the label is inscribed with the entire first verse of the "Star-Spangled Banner": O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's light gleaming. Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watch'd were so gallantly streaming?
Woody Guthrie shout out
Budweiser's label quotes Gutherie's "This Land is Your Land" on the bottom of the label with the words "From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters This Land Was Made For You and Me."
Liberty & Justice For All
OK, OK we get it -- Budweiser's got spirit.
