Budweiser is testing a Facebook campaign letting fans send vouchers for free Bud Lights to people celebrating special occasions.
The program is currently being trialed in Denver and Chicago, and Facebook worked with Anheuser-Busch on its new promotion.
The ‘Bud Light Birthday’ and ‘Buds for Buds’ campaigns are promoted through posts in the Facebook news feed, and enable users to gift their friends a free Bud Light beer.
After purchasing the beer, a mobile voucher is sent to the recipient, which can be redeemed in-person at participating bars and restaurants.
Following the testing period, the company hopes to roll the campaign out nationally by the end of the year.
The pilot programs were developed in partnership with AKQA and Facebook’s Creative Shop, and are powered by merchant integration technology platform Gratafy, which enables the in-venue mobile redemption.
This isn’t the first time a popular beverage company has used an online social network to give drinks away.
Anyone willing to link their Starbucks and Twitter accounts has been able to send $5 Starbucks gift cards to friends since last fall in a promotion designed to get people accustomed to using Starbucks’s mobile payment app.
The company now processes 15 percent of orders in U.S. stores through the app.