Anheuser-Busch Announces Bud Light Lime

Anheuser-Busch Cos. plans to "fruit the beer." The St. Louis-based brewer will introduce Bud Light Lime in the first week of May, backing the new beer with a $35 million marketing blitz on television and billboards.

"We're treating this as a big launch," said Dave Peacock, vice president of marketing at the company's domestic beer subsidiary.

The national rollout of the Bud Light brand extension is an effort to capitalize on the popularity of flavored beers. If all goes as planned, the new brew will juice sales of the "Bud family" -- a collection of Budweiser, Bud Light, Budweiser Select and Bud Chelada whose U.S. sales together supply about 40 percent of the company's overall beer shipments. That group's sales volume, measured in barrels, fell last year.

"This works," Peacock said of the lime-infused entrant. "It enhances Bud Light."

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