A story from Tennessee shows just how damaged the Bud Light brand is. For decades, one of the stages at Chattanooga’s downtown summer music festival has been “The Bud Light Stage,” sponsored by the local AB distributor.

No longer. …

The rebranding of the “Bud Light Stage” to the “Ultra Stage” reflects more than just how toxic the Bud Light brand is. AB distributors need to sell beer, and any money spent promoting Bud Light is going to be wasted. While AB as a whole is being hit hard, its other brands are not as radioactive as Bud Light.

Selling Bud Light nowadays is like selling Ford Pintos in the late ‘70s, when that car’s reputation was permanently marred as being prone to gas tank explosions. Fair or not, Pintos became a joke, which was very difficult for the dealers trying to sell them. The arrival of the Ford Escort in 1980 was a re-birth for Ford and for its dealers.

[Once a brand goes toxic, it’s tough to reverse the process. I suspect that A-B InBev may end up trying to do this same thing on a more macro scale. They’ll wait for a long while to see if they can recover the brand, but a few months from now, don’t be surprised if Busch Ultra or some other new name gets slapped on the Bud Light output. — Ed]