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Notes -
https://youtube.com/watch?v=wg7iiVKJ2CU
Bud light released a commercial. Subtext: we screwed up.
It gave me a chuckle.
If you have the context of associating it with them screwing up and being a mea culpa, it's mildly funny. For all the people who touch grass and don't think about politics like that, it's a commercial where people drinking Bud Light are having a terrible time
If you watch the commercial closely, not a single person in it is actually drinking Bud Light. They carry it, they wave it around, they open it, they hold it, they store it, they spill it, they do a hundred things with it, but one thing they never do with it is actually drinking any.
I think this is true of beer commercials in general -- IIRC it's prohibited to show drinking on TV in some jurisdictions, so advertisers are as conservative as possible to ensure that the ads can show everywhere? It's always been the case in Canada, anyways.
See here:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aqqd1qQ-a5g&t=59
Yeah this is hilarious. You can advertise beer, but you can't show one thing that people are actually supposed to do with the beer, because I guess if you don't show it, impressionable viewers won't be able do figure out what it is to be done with the beer and thus will be saved. Makes total sense, eh?
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Too late. You can't tell people "I hate you and piss on everything you hold dear, you ugly stupid fucks" and then just come back and say "never mind, my bad, I didn't really mean that, let's be friends again, we need your sweet dollars, my dear friend!". I don't think anything short of full throated coming out as deplorables can save this brand in the eyes of the red tribe, and there's no chance they'd do that. They are still sponsoring pride parades. Mulvaney wasn't something they did by mistake. It was a mistake, but it was full intentional, and everything that caused it is still there. Tranheuser-Bush is probably too big to fail and can keep the brand alive indefinitely, but I don't think their stance in the red tribe will ever recover.
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Too late. If this had been the type of commercial released back at the start (instead of the disastrous attempt at getting Mulvaney as an influencer), it would have been unremarkable.
And the Marketing VP would have nixed it for that reason: too much fratty humour. Too white. Too old. Doesn't elevate and expand the brand.
That they're putting it out now is clearly just pandering, and it doesn't read to me like "we screwed up", but more "this is the kind of stuff you dumb rednecks like, right?"
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