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?
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.
