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AB InBev and Tiësto Turn Tomorrowland Into a Global Beer Moment
Infected by Music is a global, cross-brand digital campaign created by Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam for AB InBev in July 2016, built around an original song and music video produced in partnership with Dutch DJ and producer Tiësto and Los Angeles-based DJ and producer JAUZ, timed to AB InBev's exclusive sponsorship of the Tomorrowland electronic music festival in Belgium.
The campaign operates on a straightforward but ambitious premise. Tomorrowland, one of the world's largest electronic music festivals, draws audiences that vastly outnumber those who can physically attend its three festival days, which ran from 22 to 24 July 2016 in Belgium, according to the festival's own published schedule. AB InBev used that gap — between the experience insiders have and the aspiration outsiders hold — as the campaign's central engine. The original track by Tiësto and JAUZ became the vehicle for delivering that experience beyond the festival perimeter, allowing audiences worldwide to be, in the campaign's own framing, infected by music.
The campaign was published in The Netherlands in July 2016 and extended across approximately 25 markets with local activations, as reported by Little Black Book Online. What made the mechanics distinctive was the cross-brand architecture. A single music video served as the master creative asset, with different versions highlighting different AB InBev brands depending on the market — Budweiser, Jupiler, Beck's, Quilmes, and Cubanisto among them, as documented by Ads of the World. The Spotify release of the track was scheduled for 15 July 2016, with the public campaign announcement following on 19 July 2016, as reported by The Drum. Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam served as the sole creative agency across all market versions.
AB InBev holds exclusive sponsorship rights to Tomorrowland. That exclusivity gave Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam a rare strategic starting point: a single, globally legible cultural moment with a rights-protected competitive moat. For the Dutch and broader European markets, where Jupiler is a dominant AB InBev brand and where electronic music culture carries genuine mainstream weight, the alignment between festival and beer brand was not metaphorical — it was audience-precise.
The strategic insight the agency pursued was one of democratisation. As Thierry Albert, Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam, stated in remarks reported by Little Black Book Online: "Tomorrowland unites the world through a love of music." The campaign translated that aspiration into a functional media idea — if the festival unites, the song and video can carry that unity to the tens of millions who will never hold a wristband. In The Netherlands specifically, where the alcoholic drinks market operates under strict advertising standards set by the Stichting Reclame Code and the Alcoholreclame Regels, grounding the campaign in music and cultural participation rather than product benefit gave the creative work structural legitimacy alongside emotional reach.
Competitively, the move placed AB InBev directly ahead of Heineken, whose own long-standing music sponsorship infrastructure — including its association with major global festivals — makes music one of the most contested territories in alcohol marketing. Carlsberg, another significant competitor in the Dutch and pan-European market, had similarly leaned on cultural partnerships in this period. By securing exclusivity at Tomorrowland and commissioning an original track rather than licensing existing music, AB InBev and Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam transformed a sponsorship into original content, a distinction with material consequences for earned media reach. According to the Kirin Holdings Global Beer Market Report, Europe accounted for approximately 27.3% of global beer production in 2016, underscoring the strategic weight of the continental market the campaign was designed to activate.
Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam constructed the campaign around a single three-minute music video. The track was an original composition, not a licensed festival anthem, produced by Tiësto and JAUZ specifically for AB InBev's Tomorrowland partnership — a distinction that shaped both the creative and the commercial value of the work.
Tiësto, born Tijs Michiel Verwest in Breda, The Netherlands, carries particular resonance for a campaign published in the Dutch market in 2016. His status as one of electronic music's most globally recognised figures gave the collaboration cultural credibility that a straightforward sponsorship billboard could not replicate. Tiësto commented on the collaboration in remarks reported by Billboard: "Jauz is an incredibly skilled producer with a distinctive sound, and collaborating with him was a genuine creative exchange." JAUZ, the Los Angeles-based producer and DJ, brought a complementary sonic profile that broadened the track's appeal across different electronic music subcultures represented in Tomorrowland's audience.
The visual approach, as described by It's Nice That in their July 2016 coverage, leaned into the transformative mythology of festival culture. Thierry Albert, Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam, articulated the concept directly in remarks cited by Little Black Book Online: "The festival transforms goers into the true version of themselves. In the Infected music video we bring this to life by visually displaying this transformation as a free, loving, dancing, singing creature who only wants to party, love and drink cold beverages." The video's imagery pursued that transformation literally, depicting physical and emotional release as the visual grammar of the music. A 30-second edit was produced for television and online pre-roll alongside the full-length video, as reported by Ads of the World, allowing the campaign to function across both broadcast and digital environments simultaneously. Production credits beyond the creative direction of Thierry Albert at Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam are not fully documented in publicly available sources.
No verified performance data for the Infected by Music campaign is publicly available in terms of view counts, reach figures, or brand lift metrics attributed to a named source. What the campaign's structure makes legible, however, is a set of design decisions that carry their own effectiveness logic.
The cross-brand architecture — one master creative asset, multiple market-specific versions — is a model that reduces per-market production cost while preserving local brand relevance. For AB InBev, operating brands as different in positioning as Jupiler in Belgium and The Netherlands and Quilmes in Argentina, this approach represents a meaningful efficiency against the alternative of commissioning separate campaigns by market. The Spotify release date of 15 July 2016, preceding the public campaign announcement of 19 July 2016 as reported by The Drum, and the festival itself beginning 22 July 2016, reflects a sequenced media strategy designed to build anticipation in layers rather than deploying all assets simultaneously.
The decision to commission original music rather than license existing festival content gave AB InBev a proprietary cultural asset with a life independent of paid media placements. The track existed as a Spotify-distributed song before it existed as an advertisement, which altered the terms on which audiences encountered it. It's Nice That noted in their July 2016 coverage that the campaign represented a meaningful evolution in how alcohol brands were approaching festival sponsorship — from logo placement to content creation. Clapboard rates Infected by Music at 73 out of 100, reflecting the campaign's strategic coherence and cross-brand ambition, with room acknowledged for deeper measurable creative distinctiveness at the individual brand level.
Infected by Music is a global digital campaign created by Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam for AB InBev in July 2016. It centres on an original track by Tiësto and JAUZ made exclusively for AB InBev's Tomorrowland sponsorship. The campaign ran across approximately 25 markets, with different AB InBev brands featured in each version, as reported by Little Black Book Online.
Tiësto was chosen for his global stature in electronic music and his Dutch origins, which gave the campaign published in The Netherlands authentic cultural grounding. As reported by Billboard, Tiësto and JAUZ produced the track as an original composition, not a licensed work, creating a proprietary asset for AB InBev's exclusive Tomorrowland sponsorship platform.
Multiple AB InBev brands featured across different market versions of the campaign. According to Ads of the World, these included Budweiser, Jupiler, Beck's, Quilmes, and Cubanisto. The single master music video was adapted with different brand highlights per market, allowing the campaign to function as a cross-brand activation across approximately 25 markets simultaneously.
The Infected by Music track was released on Spotify on 15 July 2016, ahead of the public campaign announcement on 19 July 2016, as reported by The Drum. Tomorrowland itself ran from 22 to 24 July 2016 in Belgium. The sequential release was designed to build anticipation before the festival opened.
Clapboard rates Infected by Music at 73 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong strategic architecture and cross-brand ambition across 25 markets, while acknowledging that deeper creative differentiation at the individual brand level represents the primary area where additional effectiveness could have been realised.
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