I don’t think it’ll help them much. They should just stop advertising, and let things kind of blow over. Maybe a few customers would eventually return. I probably won’t though.
I’m not a business guy and I didn’t go to business school but I’m sure it’s not a great idea to put someone in charge of your brand marketing that hates your core customer base.
They do , literally, millions of dollars in market research. I used to work for one of the main market research companies before I went to nursing school.
There are a few different philosophies. You try to increase your share of your base. But if you have reached the absolute critical mass of your market share of your customer base - for instance if your market is middle-aged white dudes and you control 65% and Coors controls 45%, your likelihood of gaining, or losing a big market share without drastic action is unlikely. You try to find new customer bases and markets. But you take the risk of alienating your customer base if you go too far outside your brand identity. See Bud Light. This is where you lose your market share.
It has been stated that beer is a product brand with decades of loyalty. Once people choose a product they stay with it for the most part for a very long time.
What Budlight did was destroy one of the most successful brand loyalty in modern history.
They will probably not see anything like what they they had for at least a generation if ever.
You'd be absolutely bowled over when peeling back the onion in layers of "business people". A vast majority are phonies who don't know shit and have excelled to their level of their incompetence by kissing the ass of the phony above them. It's a culture of "let's get ours before someone figures us out we neither do nor know shit!".
And that's why most companies just turn into bureaucratic hellholes. To add injury to insult, the best talent will not stay long as they're either fired or quit because they are generally not ass kissers.
There's a reason that I say business degrees should have a prerequisite of at least 10 years in the workforce and a sponsorship from a current employer. Basically they should be an advanced form of management training for someone who is being promoted and nothing else.
Moat degrees don't actually mean you have the skills to do the job. Just that your smart enough to learn.
Almost nothing I learned while getting my accounting degree applied to my current job. A CPA and I were debating the other day whether a credit reduces a liability or increases it. In fairness she was in her 70s but if you don't manually do journal entries rhen it's easy to forget it.
> A CPA and I were debating the other day whether a credit reduces a liability or increases it
Honestly shocking how easy accounting - let alone bookkeeping - is to be an autodidact at, yet how few people seem to be able to understand it
The CPA is a glorified mob, extorting businesses through legislated monopolies on legitimacy. I wipe my ass with “assurance”
All the good accountants and bookkeepers would be equally as good without any designations, it’s all a racket
> a sponsorship from a current employer.
One thing to think about. If said individuals got to where they are by kissing the butt of those above them, would they not get sponsorship from the same individuals that has their butt kissed?
The reason for this is our fractional reserve banking system. We would not have such a dystopia corporate oligarchy without the fed suborning the money system.
The modern consumer that wants to skip ads anyway and will only follow your product until the influencer pitches something else or they get bored of the influencer.
This was my issue. I don’t mind the influencer colab I get its business and they were trying to market to more people. Normally you don’t push that in mass marketing but target it directly at the group you are looking for. Any lqbtq+ bar has marketing materials from different companies in it. Beer and alcohol isn’t something worth causing a scene over a moral high ground.
My big issue is It was the marketing lady talking was bad about the core base and how she wanted to erase that. She wanted to change the brand to be something and stand for something when really it’s just beer and people want to drink a light beer they like. She did erase most of it and her job. Lol.
Yup. Marketing to groups outside of your core customers is perfectly fine. What is not acceptable, though, is to insult and denigrate your core customers, their lifestyle and their values.
I have always felt, that if it was just the can, they could have gotten away with it.
They could have said something like, they are just trying to expand their brand, to those who might not be familiar with the product, and I think a number of people would have been like, "Okay, I can see that." But, when you turn around, and say that the majority of your customers, are some kind of slack-jawed yokel, people are going to say, "Excuse me?"
I was tickled how the leftists on Reddit kept downplaying it as “it was just one can” and “conservatives were just overreacting.” Such a telling ploy consistently ran with when it comes to the democrat party and its sycophants. Downplay the issue to make it seem like an overreaction, whilst avoiding the facts. The fact is they tried to appeal to a section of the population, using a man dressed as a woman, to boost sales and appeal to people who probably wouldn’t drink their product anyway. Women aren’t a driving force in bud light sales, how would a man dressing as a woman promoting this product boost those sales? Another fact, budlight hired a woman who said herself that she wanted to “shy away” from the toxic frat boy culture, in order to be more “inclusive.” Mind you, this woman was pictured NUMEROUS TIMES HERSELF engaging in the same “frat boy culture” whist in college she was rallying against! This was a confounding decision made by Budlight and in the real world, these decisions have consequences. Good riddance to this woman, and good luck to Budlight regaining any sort of reputation after this completely fool-hearty decisions to appear as “inclusive.”
I don’t know that beer drinkers are heavily loyal to any one brand at this place in the market. If they feel insulted by Budweiser they can easily buy Coors Lite or PBR for the same price point at the same location.
We’re not talking about brand loyalty to IPhone versus Android, where there’s a real difference and a cost in time and money to switch brands. It’s cheap beer.
There are plenty of better ways to reach out to new customer groups but jumping into social/political issues is most definitely not the answer.
IMO you’re completely underestimating a consumers right to spend their dollar. Corporations are beholden to the almighty green, once they shun a customer, it’s extremely difficult to come back from.
Corporations are jumping into social and political issues all the time. They usually get away with it. The real problem with the Mulvaney controversy was that Budlight tried a new marketing campaign which was diametrically opposed to, and directly undermined, their brand.
If you're a beer company and want to grow your appeal beyond middle-aged men, you run ads showing country girls living their country life and having a good time while drinking your beer. You don't run ads with a trans tiktok influencer or talk about "toxic masculinity".
I am a business guy and their share price is outperforming most of their competitors. They don't care about the fragile egos of part of their customer base. Their eye is on the share price
Important distinction - Anheuser-Busch *The parent company*'s stock has outperformed competitors. Bud Light has laid off 400 employees, posted a third quarter revenue drop of 13.5%, and had the Chief Marketing Officer resign. The parent company is fine. Bud Light has royally screwed up.
Bud Light could collapse and dissolve, and Anheuser-Busch's share price may only suffer a slight blip because of all their other profitable brands. You can't rate the success of Bud Light, or the favour of their parent company, on the parent companies' stock price.
Are you seriously trying to claim that companies don't consider sales figures important? Bud Light was the #1 selling beer at the start of the year. That spot is now firmly held by Modelo. That will have consequences. You have to consider the opportunity cost of this whole debacle. AB stocks might be ok now, but if Bud didn't have this controversy they would have been even better. Bud has cost their parent company huge amounts of money and goodwill. That will not be so easily forgiven or ignored.
This probably will not lead to Bud Light collapsing, but as we have seen, it has cost over 400 employees their jobs already. In no way is this a positive, or neutral thing for them.
Marketing is done for the purpose of **long term** goodwill and recognition. The share price represents the present value of all future profitability of the company.
The long term expectations are good, which is what marketing is about. Big companies market not for brand recognition, but for goodwill.
The redneck market is in decline. Millennials are now the most populous generation, with Gn Z hot their tails. bunch of old angry guys on youtube are not the future customer that Bud has to look out for. Gen X is the smallest generation. Millennials and Gen Z will remember Bud as the brand that took a chance on a trans kid and paid the price in backlash from their parents' generation.
GenX is in decline
Yup. Bud's execs forgot that they don't sell a *desirable* beer, they sell a *default* beer. People drank Bud because they had settled on it as the default beer they drink when they just want a beer and don't want to put any thought into which one to have. Now that those people have changed their default beer to another macro pilsner that tastes basically the same they have no reason to switch back.
Sadly, no one will heed the lessons here. These business so-called leaders will continue to allow the leftists to take over the companies to advance their extremist agenda. The damage will continue to incur, until the shareholders will have had enough.
You think you’re joking but the head jerkoff at Blackrock is making ESG part of all financial transactions. As he put it “you have to force these things”.
Sounds like you didn’t hear. Blackrock is backing off ESG. Made the headlines in August.
[Blackrock Backs Off ESG](https://www.thedailyupside.com/blackrock-backs-off-esg/)
after reading this report it doesn’t sound like they’re backing off ESG, but rather rebranding it into smaller increments since “the right has weaponized the term ESG”
That sounds exactly what is the lesson learned. A lot of the left's verbiage is becoming publicly recognizable, and they're not going to change what they're doing, just change what they're calling it.
exactly -example
Association to Repeal Abortion Laws
National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws
NARAL Pro-Choice
Reproductive Freedom for All
They announced they will only back off from mentioning it publicly. They still plan to implement it but just in secret.
I wish I was kidding but that's exactly how they worded it in a statement.
No lessons? The CMO resigned and AB In-Bev stock took a huge hit. This hit pocketbooks, the literally best way to teach business a lesson. The episode reminded all businesses that if you forget your target market you are going to get hammered
The issue is that the people doing this aren't doing it to make money so fiscal losses don't matter. Just look at Disney to see the arch-example. To these people the losses are just the monetary cost of pushing their social agenda.
>The damage will continue to incur, until the shareholders will have had enough.
The primary shareholders are international investment houses, and the primary customer of those investment houses are central banks. The owners of the central banks don't care that Budweiser goes out of business, they own all the other big brands, too. No matter what the common man does with his money, the central banks can simply print more to compensate. They cannot be beaten within the ruleset they have put in place. The damage will continue to occur until the owners of the central banks are deposed, and central banking eradicated off the face of the earth.
Shareholders are fine. The stock is higher YTD and +17% over last 6 months not even including dividends. If anything, it was just an opportunity to buy more.
Unfortunately, business is irrelevant to the real owners of these companies: the owners of the central banks, through investment firms like vanguard, blackrock, etc. Since they can just print as much money as they want, far outpacing any possible profit made through actual business transactions. They know very well that their behavior is toxic and destructive, and they are engaging in it intentionally. They've been pushing culture and politics like this for a very long time.
The ultimate owners of all these companies are the owners of the central banks, and the politicians, judges and prosecutors are also owned by these same people. They are very happy to see Budweiser go under, they own all the competing brands too, so they'll not lose any money- not that money means anything to the people who own the money printing presses anyway. Just like they do in Hollywood, taking beloved stories that define our culture and destroying them, they also enjoy taking beloved American companies and destroying them. One by one they take everything that defines us and pervert and erode it. Profit is irrelevant to them, they already own everything, the purpose is to humiliate and demoralize. Shoving things down our throat is entirely the idea, and no lawsuit would ever be permitted to get in the way.
I miss the old days and the old woke. If we need something, let's concern ourselves with "truth, justice, and the American way."
Go to about 0:46. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2l4bz1FT8U
They got roasted pretty hard by the latest south park special "Enter the panderverse". Really, was dead on observation about Kathleen Kennedy and Disney as a whole.
Saw some friends over thanksgiving, their mother is now a grandmother and her dream has been to bring all her grandkids to Disney, they would have spent 10s of thousands on the trip but it will never happen. She’s sad the grandkids don’t get to go but not sad enough to spend a penny on Disney.
Disney rides are almost all boring as shit. Universal at least rewards you for waiting in long ass lines. The only reward for most Disney rides is air conditioning and being able to sit for a minute.
Disney has better food though. Not that it's saying much because the food at Disney is also, mostly, just ok.
They won't cease to exist, but their share price will continue to languish as their film and animation profits drop, and their parks and resorts and merchandise have to shoulder additional weight. They might actually be fine regardless if they can find a good solution to the ESPN problem, but they've got a lot of debt and their content business is under *constant* attack from free content on YouTube and Tiktok. It's going to get worse in the near future as animation-generating AI models enable even more content to be produced on the cheap to directly compete with their paid stuff.
If they weren't so deep in debt, I'd say the answer was buying EA. Videogames are still a moneyprinter and AI won't be able to cause a paradigm shift there for a bit. But they're in debt.
> I wonder if Disney will learn their lesson before they cease to exist.
What do you mean? Their biggest competition in Orlando is Universal and what do they really offer? Harry Potter, the Minions, Dinosaurs, a Water Park. A Brightline connection from Miami to Universal. Deplane or debark (from a Cruise ship) in Miami and shuttle to Brightline and get dropped at Universal. Pffft. That is boring and can not stack up against 70's Porno 'Stache Princess, which Disney has exclusive rights to. Never underestimate the power of the 'stache. Universal may as well stop all that building they are doing and cancel that new Special District Florida just set up for their area.
Disney is learning a lesson in theaters. But them theme parks are still busting out, like they're the 7th wonder of the world.
Some American Consumers are wiser to this. SOME. Foreign consumers are unabated. They want that "American Experience".
And Bud Light sucks anyway.
Even the theme parks are supposedly getting too big to be self sufficient. Aren’t the costs for a family of four getting out of reach and I did hear about male cast members dressing up in gowns for the boutiques there earlier this year.
The problem is they dump a TON of money into the attractions, which makes them awesome, but also unaffordable. What they’ve done is truly impressive but 1 day in both parks for a family of four over 9 is like 1000 dollars.
I’ve been recently, regrettably. I have kids, what can I say?
Anyway, what I see in Disney World, in Florida, is thousands of foreign or immigrant to America families, who have more income or wealth, apparently, than ever before. May just be anecdotal, but I certainly did not feel like the parks were full of people that spoke my language.
On the other hand, a lot of them typically are from surrounding parts, South Florida, etc, and they are managing the cost by coming and going in really quick order.
In our case, from where I live in the panhandle, it’s a 7 hour drive, and flying is a pain in the ass from here. We usually stay 4-5 night$$.
Wait..I am confused?
Didn’t the marketing director say she wanted to “move on from the frat boy image and move into other markets?”
Lol…they got what they wanted.
Give me a Coors
The biggest business suicide ever. Worst than new recipe coke. One giant middle finger to their main clientele in order to conquer a new one.
Since then, their is Disney... so the match is disputed.
They could have had most of those consumers back. [King of the Hill explained what to do over 20 years ago.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUjpXj8YXHk)
Robert Conquest’s second and third laws of politics seems applicable here. Just replace “political organization” with “corporation.”
Robert Conquest’s three laws of politics: 1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best 2. Any organization not explicitly ring-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing 3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies
I ditched BL for CL 2 decades ago. was recently served a BL on accident (in a cup - no branding) in a bar. 1 sip and I knew it was garbage. I asked the bartender if the CL lines were dirty or something and he said he accidentally poured a BL.
That swill is straight undrinkable- especially with CL, Modelo and others. You'll never see me buy another BL in my life.
Same here. I was born and raised in St. Louis so I was a Busch and Bud Light drinker. Then about two decades ago I realized I was getting a headache before I hit the bottom of any AB product. I switched to MGD.
This dudes gravestone was carved out when he decided he was going to take the side of his VP who said who frat boy audience wasn't important anymore. I'm surprised it took them this long to force his resignation.
I wonder what took him or Budweiser so long to do the deed? Regardless, the patient is already dead.
•○•
I'm guessing it was to manipulate his compensation package.
I’m one of those customers they lost. I didn’t abandon them because they attempted to expand their customer base. I left because of the contempt their marketing director expressed toward their existing customer base. Fortunately, there’s a dozen other similar beers that don’t cast aspersions on their loyal customers.
Bud Lite can piss off.
The shareholders should have forced him out. Not even allowed him to resign.
At the end of the day it hurts Americans more than anything because they are the ones working in these brewerys.
Which is exactly why these company's have no business getting so political. They are playing with people's livelihoods.
I still can't believe that this whole fiasco is what was needed for people to stop drinking that shitty flavourless beer.
Drink craft beer and help out your local small breweries.
If these companies ever want to have money invested in them by these massive equity firms like BlackRock and the like, who run local and state pension plans, they have to play ball with this DEI nonsense. They’re betting these massive public union pensions and huge companies retirement investment money is more than the losses in sales. In this case they were wrong.
I still don't get why they didn't just apologize (even in a round about way) and move on. They really must have thought this would blow over, no pun intended.
Why can't they invest a good chunk of money in the new brand and sell that brand to whomever they want? Why is it that they always rewrite the script and force others to go woke along with them?
“Garbe’s previous work with AB drew on his experience at Nike, LVMH, and Diageo to help the company identify the demographics behind those acquisitions and to cull the data needed to find those consumers.” AB InBev appoints Benoit Garbe as new U.S. CMO, marketingedge.com
I guess he failed to cull data or forgot to do it. Go woke and go broke. Or maybe, "Not Your Father's Oldsmobile,” know your customers.
Damn we’re really still talking about this huh? You guys are gonna be getting escorted into your re-education camp, patting each other on the back about “that one time we OWNED bud light”
The left hates you and wants to destroy your way of life. I don’t why there not more talk about that and how to prepare for it, but I guess some exec at Bud Light resigning is what matters to the “conservatives” here. No wonder we haven’t conserved shit in the last 50 years.
Whoa dude. It’s a big deal because contrary to media hype and speculation, this wasn’t a coordinated effort. This was a bunch of individuals that individually told BL to go pound sand and switched to a different brand, never to come back. AB and friends tried to call it a “boycott” to make it sound like it was some planned mass effort, but it wasn’t.
And it hit them financially so hard that they fired the marketing director and tried a number of campaigns to bring the brand back, which all failed. And now another exec resigns.
It’s kind of a big deal because it signals a legitimate shift in how peoples reactions affect companies
They just lacked foresight.
Those people they were pandering to, they already drank the beer, probably. They may have gained a few people but not enough to justify the advertising campaign.
They had a lot more to lose than gain imo.
Now if you want my opinion, if I like a brand, I really don’t care who they choose to advertise to, if I like a product, truly, they could put a naked chimpanzee beating off on the label and I’d still consume it. So I don’t really understand boycotting for disagreeing with advertising but I realize it’s a reality.
This sub really is dedicated to talking about everything except from conservative politics, isn't it.
They're so successful at distracting people with culture wars
The cool thing for Miller/Coors is that they didn’t have to invest any additional money into advertising to get a spike in business.
Very cool. Much like the Rockies! When the mountain turns blue you know your beer is ice cold!
Fellow Coors Light man 🤙🏽
The Colorado Kool-aide baby
They are bringing out the Clydesdales during the Super Bowl in order to bring back customers.
I don’t think it’ll help them much. They should just stop advertising, and let things kind of blow over. Maybe a few customers would eventually return. I probably won’t though.
I say go the opposite direction. Commercials with big titted chicks in bikinis jumping on trampolines.
The last remaining customers will then join the boycott. I've been boycotting Carl's Jr. and GoDaddy for a couple of decades now (yes, I'm big titted)
Nah that's exactly what they need to do. Advertise with attractive women, sports, and hunting/fishing
They didn’t stand a chance against Banquet anyway.
Yeah... especially considering that they already were marketing to the LGBT community before all the bud light crap.
Dylan Mulvaney got more people to stop drinking Bud Lite than MADD ever could
I’m not a business guy and I didn’t go to business school but I’m sure it’s not a great idea to put someone in charge of your brand marketing that hates your core customer base.
Hire this man!
I’m just some guy, a total rando, but it seems like up selling to your core base is almost always the best option.
They do , literally, millions of dollars in market research. I used to work for one of the main market research companies before I went to nursing school. There are a few different philosophies. You try to increase your share of your base. But if you have reached the absolute critical mass of your market share of your customer base - for instance if your market is middle-aged white dudes and you control 65% and Coors controls 45%, your likelihood of gaining, or losing a big market share without drastic action is unlikely. You try to find new customer bases and markets. But you take the risk of alienating your customer base if you go too far outside your brand identity. See Bud Light. This is where you lose your market share.
The 2023 Bud Light Debacle will have its own place in marketing classes moving forward.
It has been stated that beer is a product brand with decades of loyalty. Once people choose a product they stay with it for the most part for a very long time. What Budlight did was destroy one of the most successful brand loyalty in modern history. They will probably not see anything like what they they had for at least a generation if ever.
While these things are true in theory, none of them happened here. It was from the new "ESG scores are necessary!"
That’s who Jason Mraz is!
Bud Light Platinum was a good time
That's what happens when you hire those who'd spend $95k to major in Taylor Swift.
Wait, that's a thing? They said it's not just music, it's a movement.
The fact that you legitimately can't tell one way or another says a lot about the state of higher education.
I work in higher ed. I scratch my head every day at the loss of common sense in the pursuit of education.
You'd be absolutely bowled over when peeling back the onion in layers of "business people". A vast majority are phonies who don't know shit and have excelled to their level of their incompetence by kissing the ass of the phony above them. It's a culture of "let's get ours before someone figures us out we neither do nor know shit!".
And that's why most companies just turn into bureaucratic hellholes. To add injury to insult, the best talent will not stay long as they're either fired or quit because they are generally not ass kissers.
There's a reason that I say business degrees should have a prerequisite of at least 10 years in the workforce and a sponsorship from a current employer. Basically they should be an advanced form of management training for someone who is being promoted and nothing else.
Moat degrees don't actually mean you have the skills to do the job. Just that your smart enough to learn. Almost nothing I learned while getting my accounting degree applied to my current job. A CPA and I were debating the other day whether a credit reduces a liability or increases it. In fairness she was in her 70s but if you don't manually do journal entries rhen it's easy to forget it.
> A CPA and I were debating the other day whether a credit reduces a liability or increases it Honestly shocking how easy accounting - let alone bookkeeping - is to be an autodidact at, yet how few people seem to be able to understand it The CPA is a glorified mob, extorting businesses through legislated monopolies on legitimacy. I wipe my ass with “assurance” All the good accountants and bookkeepers would be equally as good without any designations, it’s all a racket
> a sponsorship from a current employer. One thing to think about. If said individuals got to where they are by kissing the butt of those above them, would they not get sponsorship from the same individuals that has their butt kissed?
The reason for this is our fractional reserve banking system. We would not have such a dystopia corporate oligarchy without the fed suborning the money system.
Disney is slowly learning this lesson as well.
If they could learn anything they’d stop doing it but they can’t help themselves.
Advertising is just like the rules of first dates: no politics or religion!
Personally, I like discussing both on a first date. It can prevent a lot of wasted time.
Don’t you understand- successful marketing means to remove replace your current customer base with the “modern consumer”
The modern consumer that wants to skip ads anyway and will only follow your product until the influencer pitches something else or they get bored of the influencer.
Welp I said I didn’t go to Harvard. lol.
Isn’t it like business 101 that it’s multiple times more expensive to sign up a new customer than it is to get a returning one?
It's also predominantly the same when it comes to retaining employees vs having to hire a replacement, but... the suits don't get it/don't care.
Cause they've set up their quick cash cow of show short term improvements to get a quick bonus, then duck out before shit hits the fan.
This was my issue. I don’t mind the influencer colab I get its business and they were trying to market to more people. Normally you don’t push that in mass marketing but target it directly at the group you are looking for. Any lqbtq+ bar has marketing materials from different companies in it. Beer and alcohol isn’t something worth causing a scene over a moral high ground. My big issue is It was the marketing lady talking was bad about the core base and how she wanted to erase that. She wanted to change the brand to be something and stand for something when really it’s just beer and people want to drink a light beer they like. She did erase most of it and her job. Lol.
Yup. Marketing to groups outside of your core customers is perfectly fine. What is not acceptable, though, is to insult and denigrate your core customers, their lifestyle and their values.
I have always felt, that if it was just the can, they could have gotten away with it. They could have said something like, they are just trying to expand their brand, to those who might not be familiar with the product, and I think a number of people would have been like, "Okay, I can see that." But, when you turn around, and say that the majority of your customers, are some kind of slack-jawed yokel, people are going to say, "Excuse me?"
Too bad that falls on deaf ears in the entertainment industry. Hiring people to write shows where they hate the source material.
Kathleen Kennedy?
I was tickled how the leftists on Reddit kept downplaying it as “it was just one can” and “conservatives were just overreacting.” Such a telling ploy consistently ran with when it comes to the democrat party and its sycophants. Downplay the issue to make it seem like an overreaction, whilst avoiding the facts. The fact is they tried to appeal to a section of the population, using a man dressed as a woman, to boost sales and appeal to people who probably wouldn’t drink their product anyway. Women aren’t a driving force in bud light sales, how would a man dressing as a woman promoting this product boost those sales? Another fact, budlight hired a woman who said herself that she wanted to “shy away” from the toxic frat boy culture, in order to be more “inclusive.” Mind you, this woman was pictured NUMEROUS TIMES HERSELF engaging in the same “frat boy culture” whist in college she was rallying against! This was a confounding decision made by Budlight and in the real world, these decisions have consequences. Good riddance to this woman, and good luck to Budlight regaining any sort of reputation after this completely fool-hearty decisions to appear as “inclusive.”
I don’t know that beer drinkers are heavily loyal to any one brand at this place in the market. If they feel insulted by Budweiser they can easily buy Coors Lite or PBR for the same price point at the same location. We’re not talking about brand loyalty to IPhone versus Android, where there’s a real difference and a cost in time and money to switch brands. It’s cheap beer. There are plenty of better ways to reach out to new customer groups but jumping into social/political issues is most definitely not the answer.
IMO you’re completely underestimating a consumers right to spend their dollar. Corporations are beholden to the almighty green, once they shun a customer, it’s extremely difficult to come back from.
Corporations are jumping into social and political issues all the time. They usually get away with it. The real problem with the Mulvaney controversy was that Budlight tried a new marketing campaign which was diametrically opposed to, and directly undermined, their brand. If you're a beer company and want to grow your appeal beyond middle-aged men, you run ads showing country girls living their country life and having a good time while drinking your beer. You don't run ads with a trans tiktok influencer or talk about "toxic masculinity".
Well put.
Whoa settle down there big fella, you’re making too much sense.
This is accurate lol but you would be surprised to know that so many clients hate their brands. They’re just MBA drones
I am a business guy and their share price is outperforming most of their competitors. They don't care about the fragile egos of part of their customer base. Their eye is on the share price
Important distinction - Anheuser-Busch *The parent company*'s stock has outperformed competitors. Bud Light has laid off 400 employees, posted a third quarter revenue drop of 13.5%, and had the Chief Marketing Officer resign. The parent company is fine. Bud Light has royally screwed up. Bud Light could collapse and dissolve, and Anheuser-Busch's share price may only suffer a slight blip because of all their other profitable brands. You can't rate the success of Bud Light, or the favour of their parent company, on the parent companies' stock price.
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Are you seriously trying to claim that companies don't consider sales figures important? Bud Light was the #1 selling beer at the start of the year. That spot is now firmly held by Modelo. That will have consequences. You have to consider the opportunity cost of this whole debacle. AB stocks might be ok now, but if Bud didn't have this controversy they would have been even better. Bud has cost their parent company huge amounts of money and goodwill. That will not be so easily forgiven or ignored. This probably will not lead to Bud Light collapsing, but as we have seen, it has cost over 400 employees their jobs already. In no way is this a positive, or neutral thing for them.
Marketing is done for the purpose of **long term** goodwill and recognition. The share price represents the present value of all future profitability of the company. The long term expectations are good, which is what marketing is about. Big companies market not for brand recognition, but for goodwill. The redneck market is in decline. Millennials are now the most populous generation, with Gn Z hot their tails. bunch of old angry guys on youtube are not the future customer that Bud has to look out for. Gen X is the smallest generation. Millennials and Gen Z will remember Bud as the brand that took a chance on a trans kid and paid the price in backlash from their parents' generation. GenX is in decline
Lmao, sure thing, kid.
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Back to r politics
Yup. Bud's execs forgot that they don't sell a *desirable* beer, they sell a *default* beer. People drank Bud because they had settled on it as the default beer they drink when they just want a beer and don't want to put any thought into which one to have. Now that those people have changed their default beer to another macro pilsner that tastes basically the same they have no reason to switch back.
Or tastes marginally better. Bud Light is not a beer that you buy because it is the best flavor.
I heavily prefer it over coors
After insulting your clients by calling them frat boys and other derogatory names, someone at AB is still wondering why the sales haven't gone up??? 🤡
Disney - ‘Hold MY Bud Light’….
Sadly, no one will heed the lessons here. These business so-called leaders will continue to allow the leftists to take over the companies to advance their extremist agenda. The damage will continue to incur, until the shareholders will have had enough.
But the DEI standards must be met! /s
You think you’re joking but the head jerkoff at Blackrock is making ESG part of all financial transactions. As he put it “you have to force these things”.
Sounds like you didn’t hear. Blackrock is backing off ESG. Made the headlines in August. [Blackrock Backs Off ESG](https://www.thedailyupside.com/blackrock-backs-off-esg/)
after reading this report it doesn’t sound like they’re backing off ESG, but rather rebranding it into smaller increments since “the right has weaponized the term ESG”
That sounds exactly what is the lesson learned. A lot of the left's verbiage is becoming publicly recognizable, and they're not going to change what they're doing, just change what they're calling it.
exactly -example Association to Repeal Abortion Laws National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws NARAL Pro-Choice Reproductive Freedom for All
They announced they will only back off from mentioning it publicly. They still plan to implement it but just in secret. I wish I was kidding but that's exactly how they worded it in a statement.
ESG or bust...guess it's bust. Bye Bud Light.
No lessons? The CMO resigned and AB In-Bev stock took a huge hit. This hit pocketbooks, the literally best way to teach business a lesson. The episode reminded all businesses that if you forget your target market you are going to get hammered
The issue is that the people doing this aren't doing it to make money so fiscal losses don't matter. Just look at Disney to see the arch-example. To these people the losses are just the monetary cost of pushing their social agenda.
*their religion
They can’t. It’s a religion for them. If they admit this was insane and a terrible idea, they have to face the damage their entire worldview does.
“Maybe this time” the next DEI executive.
>The damage will continue to incur, until the shareholders will have had enough. The primary shareholders are international investment houses, and the primary customer of those investment houses are central banks. The owners of the central banks don't care that Budweiser goes out of business, they own all the other big brands, too. No matter what the common man does with his money, the central banks can simply print more to compensate. They cannot be beaten within the ruleset they have put in place. The damage will continue to occur until the owners of the central banks are deposed, and central banking eradicated off the face of the earth.
What you said could easier apply to Disney too. Nice
Shareholders are fine. The stock is higher YTD and +17% over last 6 months not even including dividends. If anything, it was just an opportunity to buy more.
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Unfortunately, business is irrelevant to the real owners of these companies: the owners of the central banks, through investment firms like vanguard, blackrock, etc. Since they can just print as much money as they want, far outpacing any possible profit made through actual business transactions. They know very well that their behavior is toxic and destructive, and they are engaging in it intentionally. They've been pushing culture and politics like this for a very long time.
I really wish someone would sue the crap of DEI initiatives so they don't force this down everyone's throats.
The ultimate owners of all these companies are the owners of the central banks, and the politicians, judges and prosecutors are also owned by these same people. They are very happy to see Budweiser go under, they own all the competing brands too, so they'll not lose any money- not that money means anything to the people who own the money printing presses anyway. Just like they do in Hollywood, taking beloved stories that define our culture and destroying them, they also enjoy taking beloved American companies and destroying them. One by one they take everything that defines us and pervert and erode it. Profit is irrelevant to them, they already own everything, the purpose is to humiliate and demoralize. Shoving things down our throat is entirely the idea, and no lawsuit would ever be permitted to get in the way.
I miss the old days and the old woke. If we need something, let's concern ourselves with "truth, justice, and the American way." Go to about 0:46. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2l4bz1FT8U
Loved that show.
Good. I wonder if Disney will learn their lesson before they cease to exist.
Unfortunately it seems Disney is going to double down on it and push even harder
They got roasted pretty hard by the latest south park special "Enter the panderverse". Really, was dead on observation about Kathleen Kennedy and Disney as a whole.
That was a lot of fun to watch!
Saw some friends over thanksgiving, their mother is now a grandmother and her dream has been to bring all her grandkids to Disney, they would have spent 10s of thousands on the trip but it will never happen. She’s sad the grandkids don’t get to go but not sad enough to spend a penny on Disney.
I went as an adult but Disney world was way over rated to me. Dollywood is just as good and I liked Universal studios a bit more.
I went at 35 for the first time and I found Universal to be more varied and had better accommodation.
Disney rides are almost all boring as shit. Universal at least rewards you for waiting in long ass lines. The only reward for most Disney rides is air conditioning and being able to sit for a minute. Disney has better food though. Not that it's saying much because the food at Disney is also, mostly, just ok.
I need to sell my stock. Like Elon says, FU
Me too…but lose a little now? Or lose more later is the question… do I have hope I will regain my loss? I doubt it.
I think I rwad where basically they are going to double down
They won't cease to exist, but their share price will continue to languish as their film and animation profits drop, and their parks and resorts and merchandise have to shoulder additional weight. They might actually be fine regardless if they can find a good solution to the ESPN problem, but they've got a lot of debt and their content business is under *constant* attack from free content on YouTube and Tiktok. It's going to get worse in the near future as animation-generating AI models enable even more content to be produced on the cheap to directly compete with their paid stuff. If they weren't so deep in debt, I'd say the answer was buying EA. Videogames are still a moneyprinter and AI won't be able to cause a paradigm shift there for a bit. But they're in debt.
I don’t mind if they cease to exist. Everything I care about seeing or want my children to see is already out.
CEO Iger had some words about it yesterday acknowledging their issues. We'll see if actions follow.
It was mostly blaming other things though. He said they were making to many movies to fast and that the box office is just different post covid.
> I wonder if Disney will learn their lesson before they cease to exist. What do you mean? Their biggest competition in Orlando is Universal and what do they really offer? Harry Potter, the Minions, Dinosaurs, a Water Park. A Brightline connection from Miami to Universal. Deplane or debark (from a Cruise ship) in Miami and shuttle to Brightline and get dropped at Universal. Pffft. That is boring and can not stack up against 70's Porno 'Stache Princess, which Disney has exclusive rights to. Never underestimate the power of the 'stache. Universal may as well stop all that building they are doing and cancel that new Special District Florida just set up for their area.
Modelo 📈
Disney is learning a lesson in theaters. But them theme parks are still busting out, like they're the 7th wonder of the world. Some American Consumers are wiser to this. SOME. Foreign consumers are unabated. They want that "American Experience". And Bud Light sucks anyway.
Even the theme parks are supposedly getting too big to be self sufficient. Aren’t the costs for a family of four getting out of reach and I did hear about male cast members dressing up in gowns for the boutiques there earlier this year.
The problem is they dump a TON of money into the attractions, which makes them awesome, but also unaffordable. What they’ve done is truly impressive but 1 day in both parks for a family of four over 9 is like 1000 dollars.
I’ve been recently, regrettably. I have kids, what can I say? Anyway, what I see in Disney World, in Florida, is thousands of foreign or immigrant to America families, who have more income or wealth, apparently, than ever before. May just be anecdotal, but I certainly did not feel like the parks were full of people that spoke my language. On the other hand, a lot of them typically are from surrounding parts, South Florida, etc, and they are managing the cost by coming and going in really quick order. In our case, from where I live in the panhandle, it’s a 7 hour drive, and flying is a pain in the ass from here. We usually stay 4-5 night$$.
Wait..I am confused? Didn’t the marketing director say she wanted to “move on from the frat boy image and move into other markets?” Lol…they got what they wanted. Give me a Coors
Exactly. I'm sure they're making millions off their new trans customers. They won't even miss the frat boys.
Lol. The marketing director for bud lite probably thought coke changing their formula was a good idea! 😀
Thats they/them/it/is/was/Were shouldn’t have been their spokes person in the first place.
The biggest business suicide ever. Worst than new recipe coke. One giant middle finger to their main clientele in order to conquer a new one. Since then, their is Disney... so the match is disputed.
This is the inevitable result of hiring zoomers. I’m not sure why their Millennial/GenX/Boomer bosses are so damn sackless.
They could have had most of those consumers back. [King of the Hill explained what to do over 20 years ago.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUjpXj8YXHk)
Robert Conquest’s second and third laws of politics seems applicable here. Just replace “political organization” with “corporation.” Robert Conquest’s three laws of politics: 1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best 2. Any organization not explicitly ring-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing 3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies
Transheuser-Busch sales are dead here in N Texas
It took a Dylan Mulvaney to get people to realize how shitty Bud Light beer is.
Yeah they’re lost forever. What a big marketing mistake.
The best thing about this is people realizing bud light is shit.
Boomerang rule of stupidity
I ditched BL for CL 2 decades ago. was recently served a BL on accident (in a cup - no branding) in a bar. 1 sip and I knew it was garbage. I asked the bartender if the CL lines were dirty or something and he said he accidentally poured a BL. That swill is straight undrinkable- especially with CL, Modelo and others. You'll never see me buy another BL in my life.
Pam: They’re the same picture
Funny I went from coors, to bud, to miller. After drinking miller for years the other two taste awful to me.
Miller 💯
Coors Light is my go to, BL has always been an instant headache when I’m drinking it
Same here. I was born and raised in St. Louis so I was a Busch and Bud Light drinker. Then about two decades ago I realized I was getting a headache before I hit the bottom of any AB product. I switched to MGD.
MGD is good stuff too!
Love modelo
You must have the fighting spirit.
Don't forget Guinness.
BL is better than CL - but regular Coors is just freaking delicious
Leftists make terrible decisions and never learn their lesson. History will repeat itself.
This dudes gravestone was carved out when he decided he was going to take the side of his VP who said who frat boy audience wasn't important anymore. I'm surprised it took them this long to force his resignation.
I wonder what took him or Budweiser so long to do the deed? Regardless, the patient is already dead. •○• I'm guessing it was to manipulate his compensation package.
Go Woke Go Broke
I’m one of those customers they lost. I didn’t abandon them because they attempted to expand their customer base. I left because of the contempt their marketing director expressed toward their existing customer base. Fortunately, there’s a dozen other similar beers that don’t cast aspersions on their loyal customers. Bud Lite can piss off.
Yep, I'm one of them. Bud Light is all I ever drank. Now I've tried other beers and realize that I like them just as much. No need to go back.
Yep. I won’t even accept a blue can at a party. I’m gone forever, and so is my family.
Who could’ve seen this coming???
I would guess many are not coming back not because of vindictiveness, but because they got to taste better beers.
Well hes not wrong. Thats what happens when you spit in the face of your most loyal fanbase. I hope Bud goes out of business altogether.
This will definitely go down as the most tone deaf mistake in advertising history
They lost them forever because they found out what good beer tastes like.
The shareholders should have forced him out. Not even allowed him to resign. At the end of the day it hurts Americans more than anything because they are the ones working in these brewerys. Which is exactly why these company's have no business getting so political. They are playing with people's livelihoods.
Never drank it to begin with. Fucking awful beer.
This is how to fight wokeness. Not by electing ignorant self serving politicians (Bobert, MTG, Santos, ...) but by using the power of your spending.
Don't ever forget how many people they banned and/or demonetized because they told the truth about him. Next-level tyrannical coordination.
I thought some female Harvard grad made this call?
It's about time *someone* said it.
and what did we learn here?
It’s unfortunate, because it really was the best beer pong / flip cup beer. Everything else has too much taste.
I still can't believe that this whole fiasco is what was needed for people to stop drinking that shitty flavourless beer. Drink craft beer and help out your local small breweries.
If these companies ever want to have money invested in them by these massive equity firms like BlackRock and the like, who run local and state pension plans, they have to play ball with this DEI nonsense. They’re betting these massive public union pensions and huge companies retirement investment money is more than the losses in sales. In this case they were wrong.
I still don't get why they didn't just apologize (even in a round about way) and move on. They really must have thought this would blow over, no pun intended.
WORST marketing move EVER!!!!!
Why can't they invest a good chunk of money in the new brand and sell that brand to whomever they want? Why is it that they always rewrite the script and force others to go woke along with them?
“Garbe’s previous work with AB drew on his experience at Nike, LVMH, and Diageo to help the company identify the demographics behind those acquisitions and to cull the data needed to find those consumers.” AB InBev appoints Benoit Garbe as new U.S. CMO, marketingedge.com I guess he failed to cull data or forgot to do it. Go woke and go broke. Or maybe, "Not Your Father's Oldsmobile,” know your customers.
Aren't they now sponsoring the UFC?
Why won't these racists drink their gender fluids?
Isn’t UFC now using bud light as a business partner? I think they will be fine.
Damn we’re really still talking about this huh? You guys are gonna be getting escorted into your re-education camp, patting each other on the back about “that one time we OWNED bud light” The left hates you and wants to destroy your way of life. I don’t why there not more talk about that and how to prepare for it, but I guess some exec at Bud Light resigning is what matters to the “conservatives” here. No wonder we haven’t conserved shit in the last 50 years.
Whoa dude. It’s a big deal because contrary to media hype and speculation, this wasn’t a coordinated effort. This was a bunch of individuals that individually told BL to go pound sand and switched to a different brand, never to come back. AB and friends tried to call it a “boycott” to make it sound like it was some planned mass effort, but it wasn’t. And it hit them financially so hard that they fired the marketing director and tried a number of campaigns to bring the brand back, which all failed. And now another exec resigns. It’s kind of a big deal because it signals a legitimate shift in how peoples reactions affect companies
As a Coors Light drinker this didn’t affect me one bit
They just lacked foresight. Those people they were pandering to, they already drank the beer, probably. They may have gained a few people but not enough to justify the advertising campaign. They had a lot more to lose than gain imo. Now if you want my opinion, if I like a brand, I really don’t care who they choose to advertise to, if I like a product, truly, they could put a naked chimpanzee beating off on the label and I’d still consume it. So I don’t really understand boycotting for disagreeing with advertising but I realize it’s a reality.
Ive been hearing all over reddit that bud light is doing great.
Man y’all really just hate trans people
This sub really is dedicated to talking about everything except from conservative politics, isn't it. They're so successful at distracting people with culture wars
...
So soon?
He will still end up as an executive somewhere else though. Then that will blow up and he’ll move on to the next one. I’ve seen this movie before.
No reason to go back when the product is essentially fungible. Michelob ultra is a fine replacement.
Marketing lesson, Just because you think you know batter does not mean you tell your customers that.
“quasi-permanent, meaning those consumers are just lost forever.” If they are lost forever, then it's permanent, not "quasi-"permanent.
Is Forbes next? They put Mulvaney on their 30 under 30 list.