Boycotts have remedies. Those boycotting make a demand and when it is met, they call off the boycott. If there is no demand to meet, there’s no boycott.
National boycotts rarely work anyway. It’s like herding cats away from the Friskies – not gonna happen because you’ll never get everyone moving in the same direction. Effective boycotts are usually small in scope and always have a remedy. After all, if the company can’t make amends and get your business back there’s no reason from them to change.
No one is asking for Bud to change. Faithful, lifelong customers of Budweiser have only one desire – to see the brand they once loved totally destroyed. That’s not a boycott; it’s the wholescale destruction of a brand. Bud can’t make amends and get a good proportion of those customer back because they aren’t boycotting; they’re turning on the brand and the parent company.
They say there’s no such thing as bad PR. Don’t you believe it. Customers and creators are actively dismantling Budweiser’s entire marketing legacy of the last twenty years. Parodies of old Bud ad campaigns are all over social media. Thousands of rage videos from disaffected customers who are destroying cans of Bud Light and expressing their displeasure in no uncertain terms loud and clear. Tremendous publicity and all of it directed at destroying a once beloved brand.
Anheuser-Busch not only set this in motion but continues to mishandle the controversy so badly that one wonders if they just don’t want to sell beer anymore? A quick and authentic apology with a firm commitment to never poke its nose in the culture war again would have been enough to stem some of the bleeding and give Bud a fighting chance of rebuilding the brand. Anheuser-Busch chose not to apologize for nearly a week and then issued a corporate non-apology.
Maybe they really don’t want to sell beer?
At this point the damage is done. The brand has already been torpedoed. Damage control is all that’s left but Anheuser-Busch keeps botching even that. Twice now they’ve blamed consumers rather than own their mistake. The ‘fratty’ guys that were loyal Bud customers aren’t the problem but Anheuser-Busch continues to torpedo itself by blaming the victims.
Anheuser-Busch chose to backstab its customer base because they don’t have the ‘right’ values. They’re too ‘outdated’ and ‘fratty’. Anheuser-Busch would be happy to take their money but they don’t want the taint of supporting patriotic Americans who actually drink their products. Oh no! They’re much too enlightened for that.
Flunked Marketing 101 but at least they got that degree in Political Stupidity with a minor in Leftism.
Make no mistake, the utter carnage that is happening to Bud Light is all Anheuser-Busch’s fault. No sane company let’s an anonymous ‘third party marketing firm’ anywhere near the marketing for their flagship brand. Anheuser-Busch isn’t protecting the reputation of some poor, unknown firm; they are lying to protect their now aching backsides. Unfortunately, the kicking is far from over.
I can’t wait for June. By my count there are at least three torpedoes in SS Budweiser as it is. I’m not at all sure it will matter if Anheuser-Busch pumps another into their flagship because that ship is already sinking. But any chance of rebuilding the brand this decade goes out the window with the first rainbow can on the shelf. I honestly don’t know if they are stupid enough to do it.
Ah, but there’s more to this than warring customers. After all, there’s a legit boycott of Bud Light being called by gay bars around the country. All Anheuser-Busch has to do is sign Bud Light’s death warrant and that boycott will be called off. Okay, so maybe torpedoing this sinking ship is the kindest thing to do because they sure can’t handle the damage control.
You know, Anheuser-Busch, you can just quit selling beer if you want. No self destruction necessary.
So, Rock, meet Hard Place. Ah, but not so fast. A new theory has been proposed – not by me – that introduces a dastardly ESG villain. The theory goes that most corporations use lines of credit for their operating capital – basically, using the credit card to make it to the end of the month. Only they do this continually as their gross receipts aren’t usually coming in as fast as their bills. Corporations become dependent on banks for those lines of credit that pay payroll and the light bills.
Enter ESG. Banks, twirling their long mustaches, are looking at ESG scores in addition to credit worthiness to decide if the corporation gets a line of credit – or keeps the one it has. Best get that ESG score up if you want to stay in business.
Does this really affect a huge multinational like In-Bev, Anheuser-Busch’s parent? I don’t know but Anheuser-Busch operates in the US so it at least could easily be affected.
I find this theory compelling because it best explains the insane marketing we’ve been seeing in a number of brands, not just Bud. It would also better explain Anheuser-Busch’s total incompetence in dealing with the crisis. They can’t win. Sacrificing their woke bonefides would not cost them much in terms of customers because gays simply don’t have those kinds of numbers yet they refuse to do more than deflect and mildly ‘disavow’ Mulvaney, or at least the ad campaign that started this mess.
Still, a customer is a customer and it would sting. Losing the bulk of its customer base will sink the brand, not just sting. The choice should be simple, but Anheuser-Busch keeps hiding under the bed rather than actively do the necessary damage control. Why? It makes no sense from a business POV.
Unless a bank has them by the short hairs. That would explain most of their behavior. I don’t know that this is actually the case but something has this company acting irrationally.
Letting a bank that has no actual fiscal interest in your brand’s performance dictate your marketing is nothing short of suicidal. If you are lucky, you just chip away customers, over and over again. That’s not a winning strategy for a business but a large corporation can survive it for awhile. If you are Anheuser-Busch, you lose to the guys that only own Baltic and Mediterranean, but also have the only complete monopoly on the board. Not only do you hemorrhage money but you get laughed off the board.
The reality is, Bud Light is an easily replaced product. Brand loyalty was what took it to Number One and that loyalty was rewarded with betrayal. Customers don’t care about your stupid credit lines; they care that the brand they loved backstabbed them. They are leaving for other beers. They are not coming back.
Without a massive effort, the brand is done for and the company will go down in history as Transheuser-Busch.
Could it be saved? Honestly don’t know. I know what they need to do to get the chance and that they aren’t going to do any of it.
Anheuser-Busch needs to do three things: First, issue a genuine apology, owning the blame and promising to never do it again. Second, fire everyone from the board down to the kid who gets coffee for the marketing team. Third and critically important, eat the loss. Reimburse retailers, restaurants, distributors and wholesalers for all the lost sales in April and May.
That won’t ‘end the boycott’ because it was never a boycott. It’s just a brand going down in self-ignited flames. What that kind of damage control will do is buy Anheuser-Busch a chance, albeit slim, to rebuild what it destroyed. At the very least, it will be a much classier way to go under the waves on their sinking ship.
If ESG is at the root of this and other brand destructions, Bud Light should be a wake up call for Corporate America. Guys, you aren’t a business if you don’t sell SOMETHING to SOMEONE. Find a better way to handle your liquidity needs and fast before you destroy your businesses trying to sell horse crap to a stable. American’s have made it clear they don’t want or need ESG. Make a choice and make it now – siding with the customer or the ESG nutjobs?
Just remember, Get Woke, Go Broke isn’t just for the little companies anymore.
