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Basically this.
They burned a bunch of bridges and are now acting surprised at the lack of foot traffic, much like Anheuser Busch, one gets the impression that they didn't understand who their core market were.
I think it's a little different than AB. AB knew their market but they wanted a different one because their current market didn't comport with their political goals, and besides they didn't expect it to be around much longer with the fulfillment of those political goals. Disney thought they owned their market and it didn't matter what they put out, their market would accept it.
Can you really blame them? The Starwars/Marvel "consooom" crowd were pretty hardcore in their merch consoooming ways. I honestly didn't expect them to have a spine either, certainly didn't expect them to have enough spine to reject the new Trilogy and its merch.
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There's an idea for a "so blackpilled you come out through the other side as whitepilled" effort post that's been bouncng around my head for a while, where these would be used as prominent supporting examples.
Lead by their theory of Cultural Hegemony progressives moved to capture the commanding heights of our culture, only to discover that power doesn't literally let you bend the world to your will. Provisional title: "Congratulations, you've won the crown! Now you have to wear it..."
Dramatization
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I'd genuinely like to read that.
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"Not understanding core market" is a long way from "small pr stunt goes wrong". I don't think management could have imagined it would have such a long and lasting impact as what it has become. In the past, a bad PR stunt would probably be forgotten as the news cycle changes and the old product line is discontinued (the Dylan Mulvaney cans were a one-off thing, not a product line), but social media keeps it alive in perpetuity. In 1996, McDonald's Arch Deluxe burger is a notable example of a major brand misreading a market, but it did not have a lasting impact like this has. Congrats, i guess, to Kid Rock for having more of an impact on a stock price than famous billionaire short sellers like Bill Ackman, Jim Chanos, Michael Burry etc. He should get a job at a hedge fund.
I don’t think it’s quite the same as the Arch Deluxe. There’s no real insult with the arch deluxe, it was a sandwich, and it didn’t taste good, but it didn’t cross any major lines. It didn’t offend your values, it didn’t call into question your masculinity, it didn’t celebrate things you hate. It was just a bad sandwich.
The Budlight thing was basically tying the brand to something that the main audience of Bud Light was opposed to — which is woke in general and gay/trans in particular. There’s also the issue of the perception that Bud Light is now not a man’s drink. I think especially in bars this was part of the deal. No man wanted to be seen drinking the tranny beer, and likely that will continue for quite some time.
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Hard disagree. This isn't hyberole or an uncharitable strawman, Heinerscheid straight up said that "we don't want bud light to be the beer of frat-boys and rednecks anymore", and she succeeded.
In short @ArjinFerman is more intelligent than you.
how is that even relevant. yet again HlynkaCG is able to break rules with impunity here and get endless warnings
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Okay, really, what was the point of this comment?
The rest of your post was fine. "The other person is right and you're wrong." You can say that.
But you have a pattern, which you've been repeating for a long time now, of adding gratuitous little elbow shots that add absolutely nothing except antagonism. You're clearly doing it on purpose, and I don't exactly understand why. It does not fit at all with all your Grizzled Old NCO schtick in which you act like you're just trying to keep out the riff-raff (despite this no longer being your job) and point out the truths that us jannies won't acknowledge. No, this is purely you being a dick to people you don't like. Sometimes it feels like you're testing us, sometimes it just looks like you can't control yourself. Maybe it's a disgust reflex. Whatever. But you need to stop.
You still get more leeway than most people here because you have such a long history as a positive contributor, including AAQCs which you continue to generate. A lot of people who really hate you have been angry about this for a long time and keep demanding we ban you. I don't know when or if you will force us to do that, but giving people who have earned more community "credit" a longer leash is intentional and has always been our policy. That said, you have not earned infinite goodwill and do-overs, and if you keep testing us, eventually we'll have to say good-bye.
In light of multiple previous infractions of a very similar nature, I'm giving you a one-week ban this time.
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Do you think they wanted their whole entire core market to stop drinking their beers?
If one takes Alissa Heinerscheid's statements at face value, yes that is exactly what the management of InBev wanted.
If you actually believe that then I don't know what to tell you
Regardless of whether it's what she wanted it is what she said, and it would be uncharitable to assume that she was lying.
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It wasn't "a small PR stunt going wrong" it was "deliberately insulting the core demographic buying your product".
Because they were bad products, not attacks on their core market.
yeah with the benefit of hindsight we can say it was an attack on a core market
Disagree - almost anyone with vague ideas about american culture would have been able to tell that it is a bad idea. Only single white college educated woman deep in the blue bubble that has drank the DEI cool aid wouldn't have known. Guess what type they had recently promoted as vice marketing director.
If you were in the marketing department at AB and someone said “hey, why not send a one-time promotional can to this influencer that she’ll only market to her (highly woke) progressive following and that our core audience will never even hear about?” what would you say to convince them of how badly things would go?
It’s not really predictable, tons of red-tribe-friendly corporations have done much more woke things than what AB did and still retain that entire audience. Red tribers still subscribe to Netflix, still watch Disney movies, beloved right-adjacent brands like Chick-fil-A went full DEI and other than some Twitter users nobody cared, the core oo-rah red tribe demographic sports league, the NFL, went full woke, even NASCAR went woke. None of them saw a major backlash that convinced them to backtrack (yes, there was Kaepernick, but the NFL is still ultra-woke).
Predicting that a promotional can of Bud Lite would set this off wasn’t obvious.
I'd say "we're a lifestyle brand and this would directly contradict our brand image, so it's bad practice, like playing with fire."
Honestly, I don't get it. I empathize with wanting to expand your brand image beyond your core audience, but you grow your territory by expanding it around the periphery -- not by parachuting in on the other side of the world.
Framing this as a big-brained move seems to take more complexity than the obvious explanation: the marketing department was culturally completely disconnected from the core audience and wanted to do something that made them feel good instead of their audience, so they cooked up some arguments to do it.
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"He doesn't have a highly woke following he's a lolcow, hate-watched by a following of alogs. Just read the comments on youtube and then imagine what they would write if this topic wasn't heavily censored. This marketing campaign will only be seen by TERFs and chuds, the best you can hope from it is that it will have zero impact."
"What's an alog?"
But really, I think they knew what they were doing. If you spend enough time on the app formerly known as twitter you start developing a reactive mind, you do/say/think things just to maximally own the libs/chuds. Somebody in marketing just thought "what can I do in my line of work to own the chuds today? I know they seem to hate this Dylan Mulvaney person, I'll sponsor them".
Okay, but no, really, what's an alog?
According to the official Kiwi Farms glossary:
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If Patagonia decided to give Mike Lindell a custom made jacket and ask him to make a quick video about it, the backlash would likely be similar. There's also the fact that AB is easily replaceable in nearly every part of the country compared to NFL/Nascar/etc.
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The influencer in question recently was mired in controversy for a whitehouse visit and was already under the baleful eye of the core demo?
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"There is no such thing as marketing that you can know your core audience will never hear about".
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I guess. but companies are always do weight/wacky promotions to generate 'buzz'. Think of Burger King's various weird promotions . The assumption is, a misfire will be forgotten and society will move on. But not this time. If I were a hedge fund manger, and then Kid Rock video just came out and I had to make a call if society would move on or it would have a lasting impact, I would be in the former camp. yeah I was wrong.
This campaign was equivalent of makeup company sending unironically a free copy of Duke Nukem - complete series at a feminist convention about triggers from toxic masculinity gaming.
yeah you're right it was a huge mistake, probably even without the gift of hindsight one could have seen it was not a typical mishap. But as someone who invests and follows stocks, I am used to companies making unforced errors, and then consumers and the market brushes it off quickly. Like, for example, Microsoft removing the ubiquitous 'start' menu on Windows 8 (as well as other noticeable cosmetic changes compared to earlier versions of Windows), which garnered strong rebuke at the time by consumers. Had the stock crashed and not recovered ,we'd be talking about how it was a betrayal on its base who had grown up with a start menu, like windows 95, and were expecting a start button, not just a mishap. But the stock recovered.
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You don't need the benefit of hindsight, the recording of the marketing exec will do just fine.
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