Budweiser Canada is looking to bring father figures and their sons and daughters back together this Father’s Day with “Your First Bud,” a campaign built around shared time at the ballpark.

Anchored by a 90-second hero film, the work follows Toronto Blue Jays fans and their fathers as they reconnect at the Rogers Centre, stepping onto the field for a game of catch and sharing a Budweiser. The spot, which launched earlier this month, runs across broadcast, digital, online video and Blue Jays channels and is being supported by a contest on the campaign’s microsite to win tickets to an upcoming game.

Anomaly Toronto led the development of the campaign, which was initially inspired by a U.S. study showing that by age 19, most people have already spent 90% of the time they will ever have with their parents. Budweiser found the situation similar in Canada with its third annual friendship poll showing that 69% of people in the country agreed with the statement.

Images courtesy of Anomaly Toronto

Conducted by Ipsos in May, the polls 2,000 consumers showed 79% of Canadians wish they could spend more time with their dad or father figure, while 71% of respondents agreed that it feels harder to spend quality time with them. Respondents reported busy schedules (40%), physical distance (36%) and work obligations (30%) as the leading reasons they find it harder to find time to with their fathers and 47% said that watching or attending a sporting event was the easiest way to get together.

Labatt Breweries of Canada’s director of mainstream brands Patrick Heembrock tells strategy that this is less of a traditional Father’s Day campaign and instead the next evolution of the brand’s platform on friendship and bringing people together. In previous campaigns, the brand focused on showcasing friendship more broadly and highlighting the excuses that kept people from spending time together; now the brewery wants to home in on timely reasons and occasions for people to connect.

“That is what made Father’s Day such a natural moment for this year’s story,” says Heembrock. “Rather than treating it as a one-day occasion, we used it as a prompt to look at one of the earliest and most meaningful relationships many people have and then leveraged our partnership with the Toronto Blue Jays to help encourage people to actually get together with their dad or father figure beyond the single holiday.”

“Your First Bud” launched earlier this week across broadcast, online, digital and the Blue Jays’ owned channels with Starcom on media, Veritas on PR and DraftLine on social. It’s the third campaign based on results from the Friendship Survey after 2024’s “Excuses keeping friends apart” and the “Male friendship recession” in 2023.