Bud Light’s actions show that the company has no idea what the heck it is doing at this point.
As I reported, Anheuser-Busch put two of their marketing executives on a “leave of absence” and hired two conservative consultants to try to figure out how to get their customer base back after many left them in anger over their endorsement of trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. They’ve been trying to make a big marketing push to get back the base.
But they don’t appear to have learned anything from whatever consultation they’ve had so far.
They put out a “countrified ad” after all the controversy, showing friends drinking beer in the rain at a country music festival as “Chicken Fried” by the Zac Brown Band plays in the background. “Rain or shine, it’s always easy to enjoy a Bud Light,” the caption says.
Country stars have been part of the boycott of Bud Light, including Travis Tritt and John Rich, so this was obviously an effort to reach out to that audience and they put it out first during the NFL Draft on Thursday — likely pointing at another group of folks that might have been their customers in the past. The ad has now gotten 10 million views since it came out but that isn’t a good thing for Bud Light.
They’d tried a prior ad to get customers back, with their famous Clydesdales, but that wasn’t received well either. They got a lot of criticism over that effort to buffalo Americans rather than fully addressing the real issue that people were upset about.
But Bud Light did something with this new ad that shows exactly why they’re still having a problem. They cut off any response to the ad, deactivating comments, so it was clear that they didn’t want to hear anything from any of the potential customers. Instead of apologizing, or asking Americans for input on how they can do better and resolve where they screwed up, they just keep throwing money at the issue, hoping they can make it go away, and putting out ads they think Americans will like. They just keep making the same mistake.
If they ever want to get their customers back, they need to talk to them, not try to buffalo them like this. As we reported earlier, Bud Light sales continue to plummet, with no end in sight. They’re now down 26.1 percent. They’re not going to be able to buy their way out of this with ads or “leaves of absence.” If they hope to recover, and it’s not even clear that they can, they need to start being honest. But they can’t/won’t do that because it would then set off a leftist backlash they don’t want, so they’re trying to play this by not really dealing with the real issue, in the middle of the road. And just like Mr. Miyagi said in the “Karate Kid,” when you do that you get “squished like grape.” They’re feeling the squishing right now.
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