Whassup?

"Whassup?" was a TV/radio commercial campaign for Anheuser-Busch Budweiser beer from 1999 to 2002. The first spot aired during Monday Night Football, December 20 1999. The ad campaign was run worldwide and became a pop culture phenomenon. The phrase itself is an alteration of the phrase "".

The commercials were based on a short film, entitled "True", written and directed by Charles Stone III, that featured Stone and several of his childhood friends - Fred Thomas, Paul Williams, Terry Williams, and Kevin Lofton. The characters sat around talking on the phone and saying "Whassup!" to one another in a comical way. The short was popular at a number of film festivals around the country and eventually caught the attention of Vinny Warren, a creative director at the Chicago based ad agency DDB, who took the idea to August A. Busch IV, vice president of Anheuser-Busch, and signed Stone to direct Budweiser TV commercials based on the film. Scott Martin Brooks won the role of "Dookie" when Kevin Lofton declined to audition. "Whassup!" won the Cannes Grand Prix award and the Grand Clio award, among others). In May 2006, the campaign was inducted into the CLIO Hall of Fame.

Later in the 2000s, independently produced parodies began appearing on the Internet (including, for example, the "SuperFriends", "The Simpsons", "South Park", the "Teletubbies", Rabbis, Grannies, and others mimicking the commercials). In addition, "Saturday Night Live" and ESPN's "SportsCenter" did their own parodies of the commercials. The commercial was further parodied in the 2000 hit spoof "Scary Movie".

The characters in the campaign have made guest appearances on a variety of television shows, including "The Oprah Winfrey Show", the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno", "Live With Regis & Kathy Lee", "The Howard Stern Show", "Entertainment Tonight", the "Today Show", "CBS This Morning", "48 Hours", and "Inside Edition".

Budweiser would later do their own parodies of the ads with "yuppies" saying; "What are you doing?", and "New Jersey-ites" saying; "How ya' doin'?" There was also an international parody which featured Yorkshire men screaming the phrase "Ey up!", Scotsmen saying; "How's about ye'!", and Japanese men screaming; "Konnichiwa!"

Dance songs with the sole purpose of featuring the phrase were created, and resulted in chart success. These include "Whazzup" by True Party in 2000 (#13 on the UK Singles Chart), and "Wassup" by Da Muttz (a nom de plume of producers Alex Rizzo and Elliot Ireland) in the same year (#11 in the UK, #12 on Australian ARIAnet singles chart).

A professional wrestling tag-team, the Dudley Boyz, adopted it as part of their signature finishing move. Bubba Ray slams the opponent to the mat, and D-Von climbs to the top rope, upon which, both men look at each other and proclaim "Whazzup!" before D-Von leaps on top of the prone opponent.

In early 2002, Budweiser decided to end the ad campaign, for undisclosed reasons.

The phrase's popularity faded by about 2003. The rapid fall from popularity was further parodied in, for example, a 9th season episode of "Friends" where Chandler says to Ross's "Whassup" greeting, "Seriously, dude, three years ago," and in a 2002 episode of "The Simpsons", Milhouse greets everyone with a "Whassup!", only to be met with indifference. It was also included in the MTV special: "That's so 5 minutes ago".

The phrase was parodied in the 26th August 2008 edition of The Daily Show.

Former American PGA Tour golfer and musician Will Mayo had made extensive use of the phrase on the greens and is responsible for a recent resurgence of its popularity, as featured in a parody ad campaign for TaylorMade's Burner 460 TP driver.

References

*cite news |title="They're up: With a stop at Comerica Park, the friends starring in Budweiser's 'Whassup' commercials say hello to success, thanks to the beer guzzling of Damien Stanworth" |date=April 21, 2000 |publisher=Detroit Free Press |url=http://www.freep.com/entertainment/newsandreviews/bud21_20000421.htm

External links

*Official|http://www.bud-true.com
* [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:g3220r1ai48p~T1 Allmusic.com article on Da Muttz]
* [http://www.mind-advertising.com/us/budweiser_advertising_1.htm Collection of Budweiser advertising including several of the Whassup? spots]