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Earlier this month, Anheuser-Busch caught a whiff of trademark infringement. Its beer brand Bud Light had recently hit cultural meme status with its latest ad catchphrase "Dilly Dilly."

So much so, that a Minneapolis brewery decided to create a Mosaic Double IPA named after it.

But instead of threatening the "Dilly Dilly" beer-maker Modist Brewing Company with some garbled legalese, Bud Light decided to have some light-hearted fun — turning a potentially combative situation into a viral marketing stunt.

The company marketing team issued a friendly cease-and-desist letter to the brewery – on old fashioned parchment paper no less – and hired an actor dressed in medieval town crier garb to hand-deliver it and read it out aloud at its offices.

To read more about how cease-and-desist letters have become a fun marketing ploy, click here.

In other news:

A new breed of social-video specialists is stealing business from old-school, TV-obsessed ad agencies. They are competing with traditional ad-agency giants by mastering the creative aspects of social media and helping brands connect with influencers.

Vice and its employees paid at least $184,000 to settle four sexual misconduct claims. The New York Times spoke with dozens of current and former employees, who said company executives enabled inappropriate behavior towards women.

CNN is axing its Snapchat daily news show ‘The Update’ after only 4 months. The media company concluded the show's revenue-sharing model with Snap wasn't generating enough money.

Julian Assange's Twitter account briefly vanished. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's Twitter account was deleted for a few hours on Sunday but returned Monday morning.

Uber's food-delivery company is outgrowing the taxi business in some cities. UberEats is on target to take $3 billion in sales, according to a recent report in the Financial Times.

Facebook’s music deal could give a big boost to its video effort. Facebook and Universal Music Group signed a multi-year deal that will allow Facebook users to upload music licensed by Universal Music on Facebook, Instagram, and Oculus, and could help bolster its nascent video effort, which it sees as key to its future.

Big tech succeeded in getting bigger in 2017 — but its failures to society became much more apparent. Even as the largest tech companies are becoming more powerful, cracks in their armor are starting to show.

Check out Business Insider's 10 Best Ads as well as 10 Worst Ads of 2017.

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