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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28781 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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But it’s something they’ve sort of deliberately created for themselves. Conservatives have known for a long time that success in PMC and white colar work means being rather closeted about things coded conservative. It actually somewhat starts in college where expressing even mild disagreement with the ideas of modern progressive ideology is going to get you shunned and if you’re dumb enough to turn in a paper that expresses a conservative opinion you get worse grades. In the workplace, almost any such expression will be seen as negative and possibly get you reported to HR. As such, modern conservatives in the modern workplace, or at least the modern, urban respectable workplace are as closeted as gays were in the 1990s. You thought long and hard before telling people in your social circle and probably didn’t tell people in your professional circle because even though it’s officially tolerated, it would be risky.

As such, even though there are probably people in their social circles who are conservative, those people have learned to clam up. They were in the room when the “right” — pro-abortion— move was made. They just didn’t want the blowback from being the conservative in the room. I guarantee (especially given that the Budweiser part of InBev is in the midwestern largely Catholic city of St. Louis) that someone in that room knew the Mulvaney cans were a terrible idea that would cause backlash. They said nothing because being anti-trans is dangerous to their career.

I guarantee (especially given that the Budweiser part of InBev is in the midwestern largely Catholic city of St. Louis) that someone in that room knew the Mulvaney cans were a terrible idea that would cause backlash. They said nothing because being anti-trans is dangerous to their career.

I'll tell you what they were thinking. They were thinking, "we need to sell beer to children without getting in trouble." The Beer Institute (the beer industry self-regulatory organization) has a rule that beer advertising can only appear in media where 73.6% of the audience is 21 years of age or older. Do you think that Dylan Mulvaney's Instagram following is more or less than 26.4% under 21? They were hoping that they'd be able to get away with it because no organization wants to be seen as transphobic.

deleted

73.6% looks like the percentage of the US population that is over 21. In other words, brewers won't advertise in media whose audience skews too-young-to-drink.

This is an incredibly interesting take that I haven't heard before. If it's right they misjudged their audience badly but there is still a certain cleverness to it

Ted Cruz posted (a less fleshed out version of)that theory to twitter IIRC, and trying to corner the underaged drinking market is the most logical explanation.

I guarantee (especially given that the Budweiser part of InBev is in the midwestern largely Catholic city of St. Louis) that someone in that room knew the Mulvaney cans were a terrible idea that would cause backlash.

I honestly think the Mulvaney promotional can was the genius idea of the marketing lady - or rather the ad/marketing agency she hired - who had been put in charge of revitalising the brand, and that there wasn't much oversight. I don't know who her immediate boss was/is, but she was given the task "get the brand selling again" and that means "get young people drinking it" and she thought "where are the kids today hanging out? oh yeah TikTok and Instagram" and she went for "who's the big influencer name?" and here we go.

If there had been "people in the room" I do hope somebody would have gone "but what about our existing client base?" but I don't think there was even a room. She was going on in the interview about how she had been handed the task and I do think it was her and a couple others and she had the last say on what they'd do:

At work, Alissa Heinerscheid is the Vice President of Bud Light, tasked with evolving and elevating an iconic brand that was in decline — and she’s the first woman to lead Bud Light in the brand’s 40 year history.

terrible idea

said nothing

I see at least one or two bad to terrible ideas a week. I don't have the political capital, emotional energy, or fucks to give to say something for every bad idea. At best I can prevent the ones that impact me, my team, and my immediate manager.

There's often no reward for the prevention of failure of others.

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