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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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