Bud Light Pain Continues

Attention spans are rather short, so it becomes a real question regarding Bud Light whether it can actually ever fix the problem it created when it teamed up with transgender Dylan Mulvaney and return itself to the #1 spot in its category.

I think the beer can recover. But I am not sure if it will ever do so fully.

Part of the problem has been the lack of any real apology nor acknowledgement that they "screwed up," and that has been weighing heavily on boycotters when they decide whether or not forgiving and forgetting is an option.

Of course, only time will tell. Surely 10 years from now will anyone even really remember who Dylan Mulvaney even was, let alone the controversy? Older generations will. But newer generations won't, and that's going to be who Anheuser-Busch, the parent company who owns the Bud Light brand of beer, is going to target through its marketing campaigns.

That being said, the controversy and the boycott live on, with AB still down more than 30% since the boycott started, and it has been holding steady. Sales have not otherwise picked up despite multiple marketing efforts to pull the brand away from the image of Dylan Mulvaney and instead focus on the workers—and now they've brought in Manning and other prominent athletes to try to bring the beer back around to more popularity.

Which, by the way, could be a good thing or a bad thing. For Manning, that is. It wasn't that long ago that veteran star Garth Brooks came under fire for supporting Bud Light quite vocally. I don't have stats on record sales or streams, but I do recall reading somewhere that he's been abandoned by at least a portion of his audience.

The thing for Bud Light was that its campaign (which they denied was even a campaign) simply came at the wrong time. Too many companies had tried to go woke and quite simply put, people simply had enough.

"You're shoving this identity thing down our throats, and we're sick of it. Just sell beer," they so much as said to AB. And it was a message to other companies as well that we're tired of being marketed feelings and ideology, and we're tired of being forced to make-believe that these ideas resonate with more people than they actually do.

It does seem to me that AB has pretty much gotten the message. The odd thing is that they are rather quietly acknowledging it. Rather than just come out and say it, they are simply looking for distance to right the situation for them. 

But again, only time will tell if Bud Light ever sees itself back in the #1 spot ever again. In the grander scheme of things, even if Bud Light can ever get to #2, sometimes that's not a terrible spot to be in either.

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Make Sure Bud Light Boycott Really Bites In

Most of the time when conservatives boycott something, the impact is short-lived, for whatever reason. I think most conservatives just eventually move on. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a good quality to have, and a lot of times conservatives don't really participate in boycotts all that much anyway—although we will be apt to participate in more focused support for certain companies who follow certain principles and do the right thing.

Think Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A.

But the Bud Light controversy is sticking, and conservatives across the country are sticking it hard to parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev, not just leaving Bud Light on the shelves and refusing to order the beer in bars and restaurants. They are sticking it to their other brands as well and simply not buying any of the beers made by Anheuser-Busch. 

No doubt the pain is being felt. The company is losing billions of dollars in revenue each week and meanwhile, other beers like Miller Lite and Coors Lite are flying off the shelves.

There is even a beer that was launched being monikered Ultra Right, that is being contract brewed somewhere in Northern Illinois, created by Seth Weathers, a former director in Georgia in 2016 who headed up former president Donald Trump's campaign.

It should be noted that it was initially going to be contract brewed by Bent River Brewing, but company president Nick Bowes declined to brew it after he saw what the marketing would be for it. Perhaps conservatives should take note of Bent River as well?

Because again, as I have asked multiple times before, is business about money or politics? And if you want to inject politics into your business plan, maybe that should have an impact on your business? Good or bad mind you. Certainly, Ultra Right would be doing that with their own beer brand. And being marketed as an unwoke beer is certainly a political statement if there ever was one.

By the way, I should point out that Miller Lite and Coors Light are American beers of course. But the company that produces them are no longer American, and while that doesn't necessarily matter in light of the Bud Light controversy, perhaps just keeping that somewhere in the back of the mind is something to think about.

As far as large American breweries go there's Yuengling and the Boston Beer Company to consider. Boston Beer makes Sam Adams. Yuengling says they aren't woke. Boston Beer has not currently taken any position.

As far as the boycott is concerned, I think the message being sent needs to be a clear one. We are tired of this woke crap being shoved down our throats and being forced to submit to it. In other words, we can't just go back to business as usual when it comes to Anheuser-Busch InBev. In order for the message to have long legs it needs to serve as a warning and poster child for any other company who wants to engage in woke politics that their best move would be to cease and desist. Otherwise, businesses wanting to engage in such antics will simply calculate their short-term losses to maintain appeasement for the minority groups wanting to push their politics on everyone else.

In other words, businesses will be allowed to simply have their cake and eat it too.

At least for now it appears that this boycott will have a lasting impact. But it's also way too soon to assert that as a reality. And it's not about necessarily punishing or bringing down a company. It's simply about making it clear that businesses need to know their customers and simply stick to branding and selling products and leave the rest up to advocacy groups to have their say. It's to say that if you decide to cow-toe to minority pressures while alienating your core customers to accomplish it, there will be a price to pay for it.

Even if Anheuser-Busch backtracks and apologizes to save their business, I think conservatives need to say no. It's not enough. Your last move was the final straw. It's what broke the camel's back. We have to determine whether or not the apology is really genuine. We have to know that they really got the message. And other businesses need to be all too aware that if they decide to go the direction Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch did, there's not going to be an easy way out of it.

What's the old saying? You shouldn't have to say sorry to one's you love. Beyond that, sorry doesn't always cut it. And in this case, perhaps it shouldn't.

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