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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32956 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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My beer consumption in general is small enough to not be a real market for brewerys. But for those of you who do, I encourage you to continue with the boycott. I'm far from the most anti-trans poster here, but I'm excited to see a big company brought to its knees when it give into corporate woke.

Did they really "give in" to wokeism? Given that:

The WSJ states that: "[M]any people, including bar and store owners, wrongly came to believe that Ms. Mulvaney's video ad aired as a television commercial or that the can with her picture on it was stocked on store shelves, wholesalers said." Because the content did not appear to people organically, they really didn't know what it was, and people assumed it was so much bigger than it was because the usual suspects of CW flame fanning amplified it. A throwaway insta video became a TV ad, Bud Light making a custom can as a joke became people fearing that the beer they bought on a store shelf would have a trans woman on it.

Would you not say this is a major overreaction to what was, objectively, a minor screw-up, which they, if I recall correctly, quickly apologized for?

Would you not say this is a major overreaction to what was, objectively, a minor screw-up, which they, if I recall correctly, quickly apologized for?

They didn't just screw up the messaging, the HORRIBLY botched the timing.

Remember this, mere days before the Mulvaney stuff dropped:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting

Conservatives were ALREADY up in arms over being apparently targeted for death by a trans shooter, and found that the media mostly ignored the victims, AND THEN Bud Light comes in to poke them in the still-bleeding wound.

The 'over'reaction was based on the fact that the exact group Bug Light angered was ALREADY seething mad over their treatment in the wake of that tragedy.

Would you not say this is a major overreaction to what was, objectively, a minor screw-up, which they, if I recall correctly, quickly apologized for?

It wasn't a minor screw up, it was a major screw up that they had hoped would be a major win. Remember, the point of the endorsement was for it to go viral, in a positive manner. Have all the tic toks and youtubers basically doing the ice bucket challenge, but with Trans-light. That it went viral was intentional. That it was negative was the mess up.

They also have not really apologized. Unless their statements have gotten far less milktoast than the initial set.

Would you not say this is a major overreaction to what was, objectively, a minor screw-up...

A screw-up that costs you multiple percentage points of total market share in a business as high volume and distribution heavy as beer is not "minor". That is a 100+ million-dollar mistake that will see senior executives getting called in to meetings with the board/stock-holders to explain what they were thinking, and what they plan to do to ensure that such a mistake is not made again.

I recall correctly, quickly apologized for?

I don't recall an apology.

He's probably referring to the milquetoast statement about respecting all Americans that accompanied the drop of their new TV Spot.

Speaking of which...

The right wing sees trans people as essentially equal to child molesters at this point.

If Bud Light had gone out of its way to create a special can for a child molester who was making tik tok videos espousing how fun it is to molest children, that would also not be looked at as "a minor screw up".

It's also not just the can, it's the marketing lady's followup video about how bud light wants to distance itself from the very people who buy it. She called them "fratty" and implied that this was "problematic".

Well, she got what she wanted!

If Bud Light had gone out of its way to create a special can for a child molester who was making tik tok videos espousing how fun it is to molest children, that would also not be looked at as "a minor screw up".

But Light went out of their way to put a Trans influencer on the can mere days after a Trans mass shooter killed a bunch of kids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting

So in that context... yeah.

It usually takes more than a few days to set up a marketing campaign, they probably started before the shooting. Should they have delayed it to not look bad?

It's also not just the can, it's the marketing lady's followup video about how bud light wants to distance itself from the very people who buy it. She called them "fratty" and implied that this was "problematic".

Relevant note - that comment was not in a follow-up, it was an interview given about a month earlier and does not directly reference the Mulvaney placement. While it's reasonable to infer that Mulvaney was a part of this attempt at branding, it was not a post hoc justification.

Would you not say this is a major overreaction to what was, objectively, a minor screw-up, which they, if I recall correctly, quickly apologized for?

I would not, and the above quote strikes me as about as obvious a case of squid-ink as it's possible to have. Mulvaney's video ad was a video ad, bought and paid for as part of the new marketing strategy by AB. Why would it be relevant whether it was on TV or on social media? They chose to put this person's face on their merchandise as part of that marketing strategy. major marketing pushes are not "jokes".

They designed and implemented an edgy mass-market social media campaign. They don't get to do that, and then claim that people reacting poorly to their message is due to "the usual suspects of CW flame fanning amplifying it". They are the ones who fed a specific message into the biggest amplifier there is, with the specific intent to get it seen as widely as possible. People aren't worried that they're going to get a beer-can with a picture of a trans person on it, they don't want to buy beer from a company that thought it a good idea to advertise by teaming up with what they perceive to be a weird sex cultist.

The WSJ is spinning like a tornado in service of its tribal interests, not engaging in honest analysis of the facts at hand. As for AB, talk is cheap. The only reason they're apologizing is because they've actually taken a significant hit. If consumers actually object to AB's behavior, the only way to demonstrate that objection that AB and its peers will understand is to make the error hurt as badly as possible. To the extent they do not do this, their preferences will be deliberately minimized and ignored. AB volunteered to be a cautionary example, and is getting their wish.

major marketing pushes are not "jokes".

Was it major though? Isn't this the exact sort of low-effort campaign influencers do all the time? It's one step above having a random "Instathot" pose with a bottle of Bang. It wasn't like he was the face of Bud Light on billboards.

I mean, it's still an ad and they're still responsible - would handing a can to a "racist" Instagram influencer get a pass? - and it was deeply unwise but I also see how this didn't even seem like a potential brand/career ender.

The reaction seems like the perfect storm of building resentment and an easy target for a boycott. Hard to predict.

It's one step above having a random "Instathot" pose with a bottle of Bang.

I think you're missing some important context by just throwing "random" out there. In this particular case the random Instathot would have been just coming out of their meeting with the President and signing promotion deals with a raft of other big companies. Mulvaney is just not equivalent to some random woman on the internet.

The whole idea with "influencer" campaigns is that they cost next to nothing, and sometimes go viral getting you ridiculous bang for your buck.

So when one goes viral in a negative way, "don't hurt me bro, it was just supposed to be a shitty little influencer campaign" is probably not the excuse that will save your job.

Was it major though?

A fair question, and I guess one must ask "compared to what?" AB's entire advertising budget for 2023? Do we have numbers? I doubt this pitch was more than a drop in the bucket, honestly, so it's easy to argue that this is an insignificant thing. Only, we have AB's VP of marketing bragging on the record about how they're trying to transform Bud Light's brand, attract a new, more youthful consumer base because their existing customer base is in decline. It doesn't seem arguable that the Mulvany ad was a straightforward part of this strategy. Large-scale brand strategies run by the VP of marketing are, in fact, a central example of a major marketing push, and this ad was a central example of that push's aim. It's not peripheral, it's not irrelevant, it's a perfect example of what they intentionally set out to do.

This isn't a case of bad execution of a good idea, but rather good execution of a bad idea. The problem isn't that they picked the wrong trans woman to be their face. The problem isn't that they wrote the script wrong, or posted the video at the wrong time or in the wrong place. The problem certainly isn't that Conservatives Pounced. You make an ad because you want people to see it; congratulations, people saw it. If it were a good ad, if this strategy were a good idea, the virality would be a massive windfall. It isn't, so it isn't. The problem is that the Trans issue is quite possibly the very hottest spot in our rapidly accelerating culture war, and they tried to use it for a brand-pivot that actively insulted their core customer base.

The reaction seems like the perfect storm of building resentment and an easy target for a boycott. Hard to predict.

Sure, that's true. I'm not going to pretend that I knew the boycott would be this effective. But I'm pretty sure I could have told you or in fact AB that ditching your core customers to chase a population that considers you a punchline, via inserting yourself into the most contentious topic in American politics, was likely to be more than a little risky.

Yeah, I suppose it's hard to say if Mulvaney would really have just been more of a one-off thing or the prototype for a new marketing campaign.

The VP of marketing said a fair bit about her plans for a new marketing campaign. How do you interpret her statements?

When you phrase it that way, it sounds like a slam-dunk, but I think there's probably enough wiggle room between what we did get and the unrealized plan. A larger campaign might be comparatively more sanitized for the American public.

I think they were harmed by the Marketing VP's comments which have a "woke' flavor:

She added further that she had a “super clear” mandate that “to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand.” She said that what she “brought” to the brand was a “belief” that to evolve and elevate means to incorporate “inclusivity, it means shifting the tone, it means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive, and feels lighter and brighter and different, and appeals to women and to men.”

...

“We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach,” she said.

The focus on "inclusivity", the criticism of the old (successful) brand as "fratty" and "out of touch", the claim that anything that caters to the old crowd is out of date and moribund...all of it pattern matches to "woke" (and yes, that includes her being a woman). If you're a conservative you've seen this play out more than a few times so, when they tell you they want to take away what you feel is yours, you believe them

IMO the choice of Mulvaney also screams "woke". Mulvaney is running around claiming to be not just a girl but the most obviously misogynist and appropriative vision of "girlhood" around. If anyone wrote him as a female character it'd rightly be seen as sexist.

It takes a lot of in-group loyalty imo to not see the issue with this guy and to choose to use them , even a bit, as a mascot for your brand aimed at a totally different market, instead of any other conceivable trans figure.

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