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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33388 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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It isn't. A marketing executive being fired for an atrociously bad marketing campaign is not cancellation.

Bruh. Come on.

If Bud Light put out a commercial that featured only white people and leftists boycotted them and the VP of marketing got fired, we'd all agree that was a cancellation.

Bruh. Come on. How close are the demographics of bud light drinkers to 100% white compared to 100% trans.

Of course if you make up a stupid example your interlocutor will be made to seem stupid.

It matters who's bringing the politics in. It's possible to put a political meaning on just about anything someone does. It's a favorite tactic of activists--in order to avoid the norms about not beinging in politics where it doesn't belong, the activist just calls some non-political thing political so the activist is justified.

The most likely scenario with a Bud Light commercial featuring white people is that the company decided either to market to an area that was mostly white, or by chance picked people for its commercial who were white, If so, that would be cancellation because Busch was staying nonpolitical and the activists were the ones who introduced the politics, even if the activists try to obfuscate it by saying "well, having an ad full of white people is already political".

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For a brand like bud light, if you really want to have a trans spokesman, don’t pick the femme trans woman known for advertising fashion and Kate Spade purses. Pick a trans man with a beard, for God’s sake. Do you even know your brand?

Part of the problem seems to be that they did know their brand and , and they didn't like it.

The "the brand is too fratty and is dying" quote from the VP can't have helped calm people down. It is a variation of the common "you're about to be demographically eclipsed and you're the past. Catering to you is outdated" rhetoric you see a lot on the Left.

I wonder if the Right just has a trauma response to it now.

Low interest rates truly broke capitalism. Bud light is(was) the best-selling beer in America. Sure, sales have been going down, but this is regression to the mean if anything. Producing a massively popular product year after year with a 10% net profit margin somehow wasn't enough.

Producing a massively popular product year after year with a 10% net profit margin somehow wasn't enough.

I suppose the argument is that loyal fans are locked in and you should try for new demos

You might see that stat and think, “Well, this means that Nike will prioritize men over women in its new, odd, gendered segmentation of the company.” That’s not necessarily how this all works, thanks to a phenomenon I’ll call Undecided Whale. The idea is that a company, as its aims grow more expansive, starts catering less to the locked-in core customer and more to a potential whale which demonstrates some interest. Sure, you can just keep doing what’s made you rich, but how can you even focus on your primary business with that whale out there, swimming so tantalizingly close? The whale, should you bring it in, has the potential to enrich you far more than your core customers ever did. And yeah yeah yeah, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but those were birds. This is a damned whale! And so you start forgetting about your base.

Which explains many cases where this happened before the current economic climate (the author gives the NBA and China, Scifi Channel maybe going to Syfy to try to be more cool might be another and the entire phenomenon of wokifying movie IPs comes to mind)

Wait, Bud Light has/had 15-20% of the domestic beer market?

That's pretty wild -- high risk/reward for marketers; even a percent of that in either direction is a shit-tonne of money.

Doesn’t surprise me. Every supermarket beer aisle is at least 10% Bud Light. It always has at least one full refrigerator all to itself.

If you want trans for bud light you pick a FtM that has managed to actually become burly and with beard. There has to be one or two. Not creep like Dylan that is simultaneous mockery of men and women.

This is a sleight of hand I've seen several marketing execs use over the past few years, and while it is admittedly genius, it is still sleight of hand. That is not cancelling for a marketing executive, in marketing generating a surplus of negative feelings towards your brand is the definition of failing and precisely what you should be fired for. I can see some people calling it a cancelling, but those people would probably be using the term for rhetoric rather than accuracy.

Your hypothetical doesn't match on the salient points. If a company put out a commercial that alienated it's actual customer base (which leftists aren't to Bud Light), it's not cancellation if those customers then boycott and the VP of marketing gets fired; otherwise you'd say it was cancellation for the New Coke guy to get forced out. If it's not the actual customer base and the VP of marketing gets fired because people who don't use the product "boycott", that's something different. If the VP is getting fired for something in her private life, that's also different.

New Coke did it's job, which was to mask the transition from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup ... at least that the popular conspiracy theory. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-coke-fiasco/

The same argument can easily be extended to show that no one has ever gotten cancelled for anything. Anyone who has ever been fired for a racist or sexist view has not been "cancelled", because racism and sexism are evil so of course public knowledge that an employee of a company has racist or sexist views will be alienating to that company's customer base.

This is literally what leftists say all the time. "We're not cancelling! We're simply speaking for the majority, we speak for the paying customers!"

will be alienating to that company's customer base

Why are you trying to smuggle in a future tense here, when Budweiser is reacting to what actually happened? How many left wing cancelations can you name where this was the case?

The same argument can easily be extended to show that no one has ever gotten cancelled for anything.

Yes, by those trying to be disingenuous. You can never convince anyone who doesn't want to be.

A part of this is the disintegrating barrier between public and private life due to social media, as well as who gets considered a public figure. A part of this is because of a shift in progressive values over time, where what may be considered racist or sexist has changed generationally to the point that under previous conditions, certain intersectional talking points would have absolutely been considered racist or sexist.

New Coke was legitimately a worse product. No one would have known or cared about Dylan Mulvaney's Bud Light deal if it wasn't for social media outrage. It wouldn't have affected the product at all.

if it wasn't for social media outrage

That is the whole purpose of the Mulvaney campaign, to be a social media thing. That it was negative rather than positive was a judgment error.

Which would mean something if she was VP of product. However, she was VP of Marketing and directly responsible for the promotion on social media.

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Yeah I think you're right, if it wasn't a replacement it would probably have a dedicated fanbase. Were you alive (and cognizant) when Pepsi blue came out? It had fans, despite tasting like accidentally calling your teacher mum.

I wasn’t alive to try it, and I really wish they’d reissue it as a limited-time thing so I could.

Just drink some Pepsi, it's close enough. They did try it as a separate thing (the ill-fated "Coke II"), it didn't make it. Probably because anyone who likes Pepsi will just drink the real thing Pepsi.

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