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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26881 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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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.

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?

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.

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?

"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:

Anthony 'A-Log' Logatto was an online personality who devoted gross amounts of time to mocking Christian Weston Chandler, despite not being much better than Chris himself. A-Logging is generally taking things too seriously or getting angry at a lolcow.

Thanks

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.

what would you say to convince them of how badly things would go?

The influencer in question recently was mired in controversy for a whitehouse visit and was already under the baleful eye of the core demo?

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?

"There is no such thing as marketing that you can know your core audience will never hear about".

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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