Bud Light
What are people's thought's on the Bud Light situation? I thought people were going to get over it after a few weeks, but it seems like people are really fed up with this stuff, and the queen of beers is taking it on the chin. Will this last or is it overblown?
Beer Business Daily reported Sunday that Bud Light’s off-premise sales volume–the amount of beer sold outside of restaurants and bars–was down 26.1% from a year earlier in the week ended April 22, based on scan data. Volumes were down 21.1% in the prior week, while so far this year, Bud Light volumes are down 8%. - Barron's - 5/1/23
What happened?
went woke, went broke
Have always thought Bud Light to be mid compared to the vastly superior, greater tasting less filling Miller Lite.
It has and will always be Miller Time.
Awaiting the most prestigious light beer list…
I only drink 2 kinds of beer.
Coors Light and Free
Who the fuck was still drinking bud light anyways? Grow up
Might be the first successful conservative boycott that I can remember. No substitutes for Disney, Twitter (pre-Elon), etc . . . but Bud Light . . . zero switching costs.
At first was skeptical and thought yeah ok everyone gonna forget this in two weeks as usual, but that #girlboss VP's interview was nail in the coffin and now I think a) the Bud Light brand is permanently damaged and b) this may end up as the biggest marketing blowup of all time lol.
Seriously that lady is a fucking moron, shit on your core customer base while being a perfect caricature of the virtue-signaling woke white female that no one likes. And who the fuck put HER in charge of Bud Light (!) of all brands under the AB umbrella, I wanna hear from that person as well.
Anyway, Bud Light is now being memed to death by the internet and the sales decline seems to be sustained, accelerating, and bleeding into AB's other brands. I was always more of a Coors guy myself but just to be safe will cut out Bud Light completely cause word on the street is it turns you gay (nothing wrong with that, but I got a wife and kids yo).
The biggest marketing blowup of all time was Coca-cola. They thought if they made a new and improved taste, they would get more people. People hated it. They lost customers and realized they made a bad blunder. Then they went back to Coca-cola classic and it was a large success and they gained more customers than they lost. It was one of the biggest marketing blunders that ended up helping them in the long run. They got lucky.
There is a conspiracy theory that New Coke was rolled out just so that when they went back to Coke Classic they were able to swap out cane sugar for high fructose corn syrup, but it's a stretch at best.
VP interview displayed the glaring disconnect between coastal urbanites and middle america. Which normally in business doesnt lead to too many consequences, but when you are that far detached from your customer base it shows you have completely lost sight of the people you are trying to serve.
Also, to say it's a 'fratty' beer with such disdain and contempt - again only possible by that same insular "we are smarter than you and know what's best" leftist crowd. If a product was resonating with any other group (gay, women, minorities) no one would throw their demographic under the bus for a rebrand. But it's open season on the knuckle draggers of middle america. And while their boycotts dont work on most product/service lines - cheap beer is their arena. Their domain. Home field advantage - them. And that's why they are making an impact
The Dixie Chicks. The original "cancel culture;" despite all the conservative screaming about it, cancel culture was pretty much invented by the right.
had a coworker who worked at Anhueser Busch- he said that AB is always late to the party with various trends (seltzer, zero alcohol beer, etc) because they are so protective of the Bud Light brand. Which makes it more fucking hilarious that they pull this stunt and get shat on for it.
Seriously though- how the hell did they get the idea that putting this person on their can would be a good idea? Now the only thing people will think of when drinking Bud Light will be this woman's ball sweat
For the record, I don't drink Bud Light because it's cold piss water.
Still, total master class on how to take a money printing horse with years of runway left out behind your shed to shoot it in the head with a rainbow cerakoted shotgun. What idiot in management thought it was smart to put some dumb woke chick as VP of marketing and let her proceed to:
I agree that openly commenting about your targeting younger demographics is stupid, but it’s not unique to them. Camel and tobacco companies marketed smoking to children as recently as the early 2000’s and more recently e cigarette companies have been trying to appeal to younger demographics, which is far more detrimental to the publics health. These companies will also pay for product placement in movies they know younger kids will watch to make an impression on them from an early age (think action heroes). Outside of commenting about it publicly let’s not act like AB is the only company trying to influence those that are 18 and under to buy their products when they’re underage. I’d much rather have my 18 year old drinking bud light because it has a rainbow on it than packing pouches of Copenhagen or smoking e cigarettes that smell like piss (just smoke the real thing everything else smells like shit).
No one is implying they're the only ones doing it. It's been made illegal for tobacco companies to target kids for decades and brands like JUUL have gotten smacked around for their marketing practices so bringing eCigs into this conversation is wholly irrelevant. Product placement in movies/TV shows I don't think is a good comparison to this, just because a kid might go watch a movie or show that has someone drinking a Bud Light it does not make sense to then say Bud Light is targeting kids with their advertising (if they had Steve from Blues Clues doing a keg stand or cracking a cold one during mail time then that's a different story). By that logic buying a billboard for penis pills that a kid might see while they're being driven to school means Viagra is targeting children. This was paying an influencer to advocate for their product whose target audience is explicitly minors and underage adults (he literally got famous off of "365 days of girlhood") to advertise a product that is illegal for said audience to purchase or consume.
What you do with your 18 year old is your business, but you can't turn around and fault people for simply not wanting to support a brand that's going against their values and/or badmouthing them as a demographic. It's annoying to be being beat over the head with this nails on a chalkboard personality that's immersed in the middle of a highly controversial topic that many people just flat out disagree with. Tolerance doesn't mean someone has to support you, they don't have to agree with you, they don't even have to respect you. They just have to leave you alone to do your thing, and it's only one side of this particular issue that demands absolute support, affirmation, and celebration in order for them to be content with themselves. People are sick of it, and the switching costs to Bud Light are 0 (arguably I'd say positive, don't drink that trash) so them inserting themselves into this was a monumentally stupid decision.
Speaking as a Brit, I saw this story and looked into it a bit, and was shocked (and even a little bit sad) to learn that Bud Light (and indeed Coors Light) is a mainstream product in the US. I thought it was a niche weight loss product or the like.
What have you Americans been doing to yourselves??
Time and place brother. An 8% ABV IPA does not hit right after a 10pm men's league tilt. The superior play is to gas 6 or 7 Coors Lights in the locker room and hack it up with the boys before the drive home.
Sort of shocking to me that it actually became a huge deal. "Go woke go broke" is a cope phrase in about 90% of situations but I guess there really are limits and certain situations where people get fed up enough to boycott.
Lol yeah it’s almost always the (i) broke and/or (ii) single miserable people with the “get woke go broke” cope replies.
Whenever I see some NPC commenting this on social media, I click their profile and sure enough they have their relationship status public as SINGLE. Poor guys have been left behind and need something to latch onto in their sad lives
It's actually pretty sick to roll up to the beer vendor with no line in Yankee Stadium. Bud Light has a time and place - it's easy and fun to drink and 4 or 5 is a good buzz, not halfway plastered like high abv stuff (which of course also has it's place)
Don't really understand why anyone would boycott - you really hate gay people that much that if one even touches a beer brand you wont drink it? Sounds like an exhausting way to live your life but hey, it keeps the bridge and tunnel away.
drinking piss water to PWN the cons
I don't want to be lectured on why we need to normalize certain lifestyle choices. I just wanna drink beer.
LMAO. He's an adult male who identifies as an ADOLESCENT girl. It's completely deranged, sick garbage. This has nothing to do with gay people.
It's really exhausting that people keep trying to conflate homosexuality with transgenderism and putting them in the same "group" when they are diametrically opposed to one another. Not even getting into the fact that the majority of children with conflicting self interpretations of sexual identity in youth historically grow up to be a normal homosexual adults, but thanks to this ideology they are being actively sterilized and socially conditioned to behave like a stereotype of the opposite sex. Yet that's somehow called gender affirming care instead of forced conversion therapy...
And of course she went to Harvard lmao
Man, that marketing VP woman is so out of touch and just shit at her job. I am so glad someone like her: pedigreed, rising corporate star type, got humbled the way she did. How are you a marketing exec that doesn’t even understand your core customer? Why are you inserting your personal politics into your job? How the FUCK did her superiors approve that campaign? And I am pretty sure they fired or moved her after backing that idiotic campaign. They couldnt even stand on it!
I get they were trying to rebrand and go long on GenZ and millenial bluehaired liberal/leftists nonbinary types. But those people dont drink beer in high volume. They might have one at a bar or something, but they are not the ones buying a 30-pack to the face for a night out. Or a six pack after work everyday. Bud Light was the beer of middle America joes and college guys everywhere. If you wanted to show you were an inclusive brand, you could’ve done that without alienating your base. I feel like a campaign around something like “its hard to hate someone after having a beer together” along with American spirit symbolism would’ve actually worked. People are tired of the divisiveness and politics being inserted into everything! Thats the real silent majority.
What's surprising is that they've already done stuff like this. They've done the typical GloboHomo MegaCorp pride garbage for years and nobody cared. But a gay man LARPing as a little girl for internet clout was a bridge too far I guess (people with gender dysphoria exist, Dylan Mulvaney is not one of those people)
The Dylan Mulvaney incident is the straw that broke the camel's back. I think mainstream conservatives have finally gotten brave enough to call out the liberal social agenda when back in 2016 it was undesirable to be called a "homophobe."
26% down? Who tf is still drinking bud light?
It's a drop in the bucket in terms of Anheiser Busch's overall volume, but they are still very upset obviously - I think it will subside in 6-12 month though... 25% reduction in volume though for this kind of industry is an absolute catastrophe
Those darn conservatives and their cancel culture! How dare they criticize and/or politicize the choices of a private business!!
Seriously, good. If you don't like the product, don't buy it. Why should anyone give a shit? If Budweiser can't put out a product that is good enough that it will command loyalty in the face of a failed marketing campaign, then why should anyone feel bad? That goes for every business - one of the few levers of power we have as consumers is the ability to vote with our wallets. If Budweiser had released a commercial where a bunch of Klansmen beat the crap out of a black guy while drinking Bud Lite, I'd certainly stop buying the product. While I don't their choice was quite that bad... I don't mind other people making the choice to not drink the beer. Nor should anyone else.
This shit is Fox News fan service, not politics.
Call it whatever you want. If Fox fanboy wants to not drink Bud Lite anymore because their echo chamber told them not to, I don't care and nor should anyone else, the same as any liberal can "boycott" Chik-Fil-A over their homophobia or Hobby Lobby over their desire to turn women into breeding vehicles. I think voting with your wallet, so to speak, is a perfectly legitimate venue for self-expression and anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous. The only thing to look out for is the hypocrisy of claiming that people who disagree with you are somehow not justified in taking their personal preferences into account when buying a good or service, while extolling themselves for doing the same thing
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