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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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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.

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