“Anheuser-Busch CEO says his company will continue to support the LGBTQ community” (NBC, June 28):
Anheuser-Busch InBev will continue to support the LGBTQ community despite backlash over a Bud Light advertising campaign featuring a transgender influencer that has simmered for nearly three months, CEO Brendan Whitworth said Wednesday.
Bud Light should be “all about bringing people together,” he told “CBS Mornings.”
“I think the conversation surrounding Bud Light has moved away from beer, and the conversation has become divisive,” Whitworth said. “And Bud Light really doesn’t belong there.”
AB InBev, the parent company of Bud Light, drew criticism from conservative activists and consumers for hiring transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a promotional March Madness campaign.
Does this seem like a sensible business strategy?
“There’s a big social conversation taking place right now, and big brands are right in the middle of it and it’s not just our industry or Bud Light,” he said. “It’s happening in retail, happening in fast food.
Why would big brands be in the middle of whether someone wants to identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+? Does a toothpaste brand need to pick a victimhood group to support, for example? (Rainbow Flagism is the social justice cause that is least likely to require adherents to give money, as I noted in Is LGBTQIA the most popular social justice cause because it does not require giving money?)
It seems unfair for Anheuser-Busch to have fired two mid-level executives over the Bud Light marketing campaign when it is apparently the CEO who is desperate to make his/her/zir/their mark in the Rainbow Flag Crusade. But why does Mx. Whitworth have to do that when Rainbow Flagism is the official state religion?
Readers: Are American consumers who (deplorably) reject Rainbow Flagism going to forgive “Tranheuser-Busch” when the CEO keeps talking about how 2SLGBTQQIA+ is the one group that he wants to support? (Not the unhoused, not the disabled, not those suffering from cancer…)
My guess is that the public will forget — AB will start running ads with burly men, not girly men, cutting down trees with chain saws, boxing at the gym, cleaning out sewers, mining coal, getting dead drunk at football games and putting large wedges of cheese on their heads, you know, the kind of things real men, not girly men, will identify with and life for AB will continue as before.
This post really leaves more questions than answers. Toucan Sam is here to help and will answer all questions asked!
Does this seem like a sensible business strategy? If the goal is to sell beer this is not a sensible strategy.
Why would big brands be in the middle of whether someone wants to identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+? Brands have not learned by going woke you go broke!
Does a toothpaste brand need to pick a victimhood group to support, for example? Yes in order to go woke then broke brands should appeal to the smallest victimhood group possible.
But why does Mx. Whitworth have to do that when Rainbow Flagism is the official state religion? Because the goal seems to ruin the brand in the quickest way possible.
Are American consumers who (deplorably) reject Rainbow Flagism going to forgive “Tranheuser-Busch” when the CEO keeps talking about how 2SLGBTQQIA+ is the one group that he wants to support? At least this bird brain will not. Helps he has never tried bud light and doesn’t really like beer.
I think people have been burned so often since 2020 that they have a longer memory now.
Annheuser Busch can sell the remaining stocks at Brown University, which boasts an LGBTQ rate of 40%:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12282843/Forty-percent-Brown-University-students-say-not-straight-LGBTQ-population-triples-13-years-five-times-national-average.html
that’s a whole lot of fags! Seems like there are only queers there no steers!
Since all light beers are pretty much interchangeable, the only thing Bud Light was actually selling was image. Their marketing was in direct contrast to that image, and offended their core customers. Why would those customers return to the brand? Because Bud Light tastes different/better than Coors Light, or Miller Light, or Natty Light? I don’t see how they will recover.
My daughter is in the marketing biz and wrote the following back in April:
“Yeah, big swing and a miss from a marketing perspective. Know your audience is the cornerstone – and with that comes the market research of their personas which includes their beliefs. She could’ve found ways to be inclusive, but has her own blinders. All of the beers have sponsored rainbow activities. And I think the Bud Light thing has actually highlighted how there’s no “pure ‘Merican beer” – they’re all owned by a few brands, they all market to ALL markets. Purity tests are mostly pointless in Big Corp America. So, no, you can’t own the libs and you can’t own the MAGAs/Frat boys.”