Bud Light is the poster child for "go woke, get broke."
I'm pretty sure that the slogan is an exaggeration--too many brands have gone woke and gotten away with it to be accurate.
But Disney, Bud Light, and Target have direct experience with the fact that going woke CAN make you broke, and that insulting your customers can be a very expensive mistake.
In short, it's risky to be too up front about your politics.
Brands went woke for a lot of reasons, but at least one of them is that the Left is ruthless about punishing deviation from its ideology, and the Right generally has shrugged. We aren't totalitarians and just want a good product most of the time.
Bud Light made the mistake of insulting its customers--I think it is safe to say that the "frat boy" customers the brand dismissed as beneath it not only disdained Dylan Mulvaney, but they also didn't appreciate the kick in the teeth.
Luckily for AB InBev, they have deep pockets and famous friends, so the brand hasn't died quite yet. But it is on life support.
The advertising doctors have prescribed a good dose of frat boy humor to recapture the loyalty of their old customers, and in that spirit the brand has released a good ol' fashioned Bud Light ad. Not Clydesdales, no flags, no stentorian tones.
It's party time!
It's a classic Bud Light commercial and watchable enough. As far as I can tell there are no transgender influencers in the ad, and even if there were there's no attempt to make us embrace them as our avatars.
I'm not sure the commercial itself does much good, though. Bud Light is a pretty generic product whose success was based on brand inertia, and that inertia is not only gone, but it started going the other way. I'm not sure how any commercial is going to change the trajectory.
Perhaps this is why somebody at Bud Light reached out, once again, to the Trump camp to get a sweet sweet Trump endorsement. At least I am assuming that, since generally speaking presidential candidates don't randomly speak about such things months after a controversy erupts.
Oh wait, look at this:
And there it is:
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) February 7, 2024
Trump, on eve of fundraiser with Anheuser-Busch lobbyist, defends company https://t.co/1eetPBH9Q4
Trump's endorsement of Bud Light probably won't make much difference. Truth Social isn't the social media outlet of choice for many people, and the Venn Diagram of former Bud Light drinkers and followers of Trump on Truth is probably pretty small.
Not to mention the fact that Trump's endorsements carry less weight than people seem to think. Lots of people support Trump, but I doubt they take advice from him on what to eat and drink.
Kid Rock tells Tucker Carlson it’s time to give Bud Light another chance.https://t.co/pFnjJBcoVYhttps://t.co/pFnjJBcoVY
— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) December 16, 2023
If Peyton Manning and Kid Rock aren't bringing in the bucks, I'm not sure that Trump will do much better. Even Travis Kelce got into the act early, before he went on his wildly successful campaign to promote the jabs.
Oops. Maybe celebrity endorsements don't work to revive dying brands.
Bud Light may have paid Dylan Mulvaney a pittance for his endorsement, but they wound up paying the piper a lot more than that.
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