Buy a Bud Light and give to Bill.
I thought I’d come up with a new slogan for Bud Light.
Having trashed one of the world’s most successful products last year by briefly teaming up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, Anheuser-Busch needs all the help it can get.
As a result, I thought as a onetime marketing professor I’d come out of retirement for a few moments to pitch in.
Ah, maybe not.
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Not a chance I’d help those guys. They dug a well-deserved hole after insulting their prime market with not only a trans campaign, but by verbally disparaging their customers.
But Bill Gates is looking to help — or to take advantage of — the situation A-B is in.
Gates, or more correctly, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, bought 1.7 million shares of A-B stock, according to CNN.
That’s a cool $95 million investment, made last quarter about the time Anheuser-Busch reported $395 million in lost revenues directly pegged to backlash against tying Bud Light marketing to Mulvaney.
Are you over Bud Light?
Yes: 77% (10 Votes)
No: 23% (3 Votes)
Or as CNN likes to phrase it, Bud Light got in trouble due to “transphobic backlash” and “backlash from right-wing media and anti-trans commentators.”
Whatever.
So far, the Gates Foundation’s investment is not paying off: A-B stock dropped by close to 2 percent since the purchase, and it’s down 7 percent for the year, CNN said.
This, marketing class, is another example of go woke, go broke.
Yet, if somehow A-B manages to turn the thing around and regain sales, if you buy a Bud Light, you’re giving money to Bill.
Okay — maybe not to Bill, but at least to his foundation. And who wants to fund that crazy outfit?
And here’s a question — what was worse, Bud Light hitching itself to an unwanted LGBT theme or Procter & Gamble a few years ago linking its predominantly male Gillette products to the idea of toxic masculinity?
No, it won’t be on the test, class, but I gotta ask: What is wrong with these people?
Why are they crippling formerly dominant consumer products — products with great consumer loyalty?
Then there’s this: Former President Trump recently said A-B is not a woke company, but a great American brand that made a mistake and deserves a second chance.
A-B supports American farmers, employs veterans and provides scholarships for families of fallen service members, according to Trump.
Sorry, Mr. President, but a brand name equals a promise and a relationship with customers. People don’t forget serious deviation from that promise.
And a second chance? They never really apologized for messing up on this.
To be sure, A-B CEO Brendan Whitworth made one of those if-anyone-was-offended sorts of non-apologies (“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.”)
But has anyone ever come out and said the whole Mulvaney thing was a mistake, and for the brand, it was wrong, wrong, wrong?
“Please forgive us and buy our beer.”
It won’t happen.
Regarding great American brands, I have expectations — or at least, I used to — when seeing names like Bud Light, Walmart, McDonald’s and Apple.
And, as we consider the Gates A-B investment, it might be noted that Trump has up to $5 million in A-B stock, according to the left-wing Daily Beast.
But enough of the corporate craziness for now.
I’m going back to just being a retired marketing professor.
