The Rolling Rock Beer Ape … Papers like the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review have pointed out, the Rolling Rock Beer Ape is all part of a faux viral marketing campaign meant to drum up buzz for the brand. Rolling Rock beer has always been a smaller, craft-style beer that tried to appeal to a certain, smaller audience by playing up its location in sleepy Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

That all changed, though, when mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch took over the company. For some reason, college kids have always liked Rolling Rock (e.g. back in the day, the mysterious “33” on the bottles was a source of many campus legends), and now Anheuser-Busch is betting that the Rolling Rock Beer Ape marketing campaign will help to turnaround the brand and make it more attractive to a wider demographic.

What do you think?

Tags: advertising, video, viral video