I don’t know Dylan Mulvaney and I don’t particularly care about basketball/march madness or beer for that matter. So I have no horse in this race, and while I laughed at the idiots who bought beer and then poured it out, or had beer made by the same company that they drank instead or any other number of pouting dissention, I was somewhat curious if this was a real protest and effect. Welp, turns out it seems to have really made a dent in the bottom line of Budweiser.
This article say that they’re down 26% for the month and almost 8% for the year, which is really not good. Which also leads one to ask in the general scheme of marketing, just, you know…what were they thinking?
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1645089599310671872?s=20
Turns out-they responded. The VP of Marketing defended her choice as a “brand in decline” looking for younger drinkers and in need of a shot in the arm. Which this definitely didn’t give. Maybe because the people who actually drink Bud Light aren’t necessarily into gender/identity politics and also the new people looking for a drink like Bud Light probably aren’t into that either. I don’t have those figures. I do know that if you’re trying to revive a market, you would definitely take a look the previous data and not an entirely different market segment. That’s usually a bold sentiment, and I’m not sure beer or Bud Light are up for those marketing segments. Off the top of my head, I would imagine that Bud Light drinkers inherit the flavor from their parents.
Actually, if you look at this table in the middle of the article, they have the second highest percentage of drinkers in the prime age range demographics-25-34. So to me, they probably are doing well in their drinking targeting and were just looking at a viral stunt to improve their customer relations. Whoops.
The really intriguing thing to me is that the “woke” didn’t show up at all. If they supported Bud Light-by saying, “yasss” to their tactics, they definitely didn’t show up for that pricing inclusivity. Which is embarrassing and Bill Burr has some funny jokes about this sort of concept-like women’s NBA and how women want the attention and equity (money and all deservedly true), and yet don’t support their fellow women playing basketball (by buying tickets). He’s plenty more eloquent that I am, but the situation for Bud Light seems to ring just as true and hollow as the whole “thoughts and prayers” sentiment. And not surprisingly it’s left a few people out of jobs and a company searching for a new identity and appeasement. If people were happy Bud Light supported trans rights they definitely didn’t drink to that….
EDIT: Ouch, this one hurts.
NOW-they’re being held hostage and having groups call on them to reaffirm their stance and IF THEY DON’T THEN THEY’RE AUTOMATICALLY HATING SOMEONE!!
I dislike the lobbyists and special interest groups ability to hold anything hostage. If it was a bad decision that took money away, then it was a bad decision. But then to be forced to say something is also awful. And that’s typically why companies try to take the middle road as much as possible because money is money and as long as it’s flowing it’s all good. When it stops is when the real truths come out. Supporting trans people seems obvious because they’re people, and there’s nothing wrong with that-it’s just the sticky step of actually taking a stance in the first place. But let’s be honest here-it’s a giant corporation that only cares about money and not truly people, so screw them and their bottom line. I’m sure they’ve done worse so while I don’t agree with that philosophy, I do respect someone forcing them to suffer a bit.