Is Alissa Heinersheid Out, or Is She Over Bud Light Marketing Controversy?

Was the vice president of marketing, Alissa Heinsersheid, fired over the Bud Light controversy? Well, that depends on who you talk to and how you want to interpret words. Which, by the way, is an age-old tactic with the left that perhaps took root when Bill Clinton famously answered a question by asking another question, "That depends on what is is."

Or maybe it was something the left has been doing long before Clinton's now famous response to what was a rather simple question. They say things that sound like the same thing but aren't exactly necessarily the same thing.

What Anheuser-Busch InBev said is that she simply took a "leave of absence."

One thing the left, and particularly the woke and cancel culture people, hate to do is admit defeat. They very strongly don't want to be wrong. 

It depends on what "is" is.

Whether or not company officials say she was fired or not to me doesn't matter. As I have said before, business is about dollars and cents. Not politics—even if many corporate America executive boards and leadership now seemed to have tapped into woke people to lead them.

They chose to allow a bad idea to hit the airwaves thinking they were being inclusive and thinking that woke culture is "the new next best thing," and they thought that consumers would rejoice when they saw transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney on their beer cans.

Because woke people, besides being misinformed about their own cause and popularity, and despite the feeling of power they think they have, are simply out of touch with reality. Consumers are having had enough of it and they sent a clear message to Anheuser-Busch InBev about it. They don't want to just come right out and say they were wrong.

So, they didn't fire the person behind the marketing idea gone wrong. She's just on a leave of absense. Okay. Whatever.

Meanwhile, Todd Allen, who is the vice president of global marketing for Budweiser takes her place, and other changes to marketing teams and leadership have also been made so that there is more oversight over how marketing campaigns will be conducted and reviewed in the future.

Sounds clear to me that Anheuser-Busch InBev is making these changes because of the Bud Light, Dylan Mulvaney controversy. What else would it be about?

Speaking about transgenderism, I think it is worth noting that the way the media is portraying any backlash on the issue, they say that the right (and republicans in general) are "fixated on transgender issues," with many state governors and legislators introducing bills that they claim infringe on transgender rights.

Wait a minute. Who is fixated?

For several years now I think the truth is that the left has been fixated on it, literally shoving their cause down everyone else's throats and forcing them to "accept this or else." Join our woke movement or be labeled as a racist, homophobe or demagogue.

They don't care what the majority wants. We are not supposed to have our voices heard. We are supposed to just quietly sit back and take it—all of it—and accept whatever their definition of the world is.

Regardless of whether or not Alissa Heinsersheid is out of a job or not I don't think makes a difference, ultimately. At least not in the short term. With this wording of her departure, I think consumers are smarter than the narrative. They want an admission of guilt, and they want the company execs to be honest about what happened and why, and admit they were wrong.

This isn't going to be a moment where consumers, essentially ignored and unappreciated, now simply go back to the stores and start buying Bud Light again. The damage has been done and the little token of a "white flag" being thrown up in a kinda sorta way isn't enough.

Besides, I think consumers need to continue to stand tall against what Bud Light tried to do. If the "moment" is one in which execs simply feel they dodged a little bullet here, the real message will be lost in translation.

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In Bud Light Debacle Workers Should Fight Too

I stand firmly with the Bud Light boycott over the controversy surrounding putting transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney on their beer cans. And that's saying something since I am generally opposed to boycotts. However, when it comes to woke and cancel culture, which has permeated businesses of all kinds for some years now, I take a different stance.

Enough is enough.

The role of business is not to promote social causes or to necessarily have one position or another. It is to promote their products and services and make a profit. When they sway from this primary purpose, they jeopardize their ability to do that.

But it is not just owners and shareholders that suffer when a backlash happens. It's the workers who get hurt in the process as well.

Consumers who are unhappy with what a business is doing is going to make a stand against it with their wallets. As someone once was quoted as saying, "Every dollar we spend casts a vote for the kind of world we want to live in." In the case of the Bud Light controversy, consumers are speaking quite loudly about their unhappiness.

At some point the position the company is taking is going to affect the workers who produce the products and services and I think they should be fighting just as hard against this sort of thing as consumers are. It's their jobs at stake, after all.

Because let's not forget, while Bud Light is only one brand among many, consumers boycotting Bud Light aren't necessarily boycotting just that brand. They are boycotting the company behind it. Anheuser-Busch InBev. So, while one may consider that other brands being sold could pick up the slack, so to speak, that's not necessarily the case.

Workers need to stand up and tell the company they work for that this sort of thing doesn't do anyone any good. You are taking a stand for a group of people who represent only 1% of the population. The other 99% are standing against you and if profits fall, our jobs could be cut.

Granted, people in general do have short attention spans, and so it is reasonable to assume that perhaps this issue falls by the wayside sooner rather than later. Still, with losses looming around $7 billion and counting, and with woke and cancel culture becoming more and more disliked, the impact of Bud Light's decision to put Mulvaney on the can could well be a lasting one after all.

Part of the issue, I think, is that I don't think companies are necessarily getting the message clearly enough. The response from Anheuser-Busch InBev about the controversy, which was more of a non-response, seems to indicate that.

They sort of said to their customers, "We don't care what you think." And even if that's not word-for-word what they said, that's what customers heard. That was the essence of the company's response. "We are going to do what we want to do and you're just going to have to accept that and fall in line."

In other words, I don't think it is enough for just consumers to stop buying the products. I think other businesses should make a stand too and pull products from their shelves, and workers should step off the production line and say, "We're not returning to work until you understand your customers better."

You have to fight fire with fire. Because the woke and cancel crowd right now have all the fire, and a lot of it. The rest of us need to have as much fire individually as they do, because ultimately we will have more fire. We are the majority.

Whether or not workers would actually do this is debatable. Or even retailers. I understand, on a common-sense surface level why they might choose not to. Still, if the message is not delivered strongly enough, the other side will simply keep on winning, and the majority will have to continue to be bombarded with more of this nonsense that is becoming a deadly cancer on American business.

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Gearing Up For Boston Beer Summer Sales

It is usually right about this time every year that I start taking another look at a favorite beer of mine, Samuel Adams, and that means The Boston Beer Company. This is one of those companies that I love to own, but prefer to trade. It just seems to consistently deliver for me in the way of gains if I buy a few months before the summer, and sell it a few months before the winter.

It's beer right? And people tend to drink more beer in the summer. Stands to reason? I think so, and the results of making this trade year after year so far has at least confirmed my theory on this.

Not to mention the fact that The Boston Beer Company is also a consistent solid performer, and every year I open a new position in the company, it costs me more upfront. There is also some appeal, I think, to the fact that Jim Koch loves beer, and is passionate about his business. The result is a solid revenue base, solid growth in the business, and when you have that personal touch added in—this tends to go hand in hand with solid performance.

The Boston Beer Company also happens to be, technically, the last big American brewery since Miller, Coors, and Anheuser-Busch were all bought by foreign beer companies.

I'll be watching the stock price over the coming weeks, and will begin to open my position. I'll also be watching the put options (which I prefer to sell) to make some money on that end of things as well.

With the put options I always take a look at where I think the stock price will go, and will set my strike price well enough below that so that I can essentially keep the premium paid to me, and not have to actually buy the stock. A process that I can repeat a few times while my interest is piqued in the stock and reap additional rewards.

I also happen to like the fact that a few of my summer six packs will be bought and paid for just by owning the stock and selling options on it. Best of both worlds if you ask me.