After a disastrous partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who reportedly The brand lost over $1 billion in sales last yearBud Light has returned to its roots.
A step toward redemption begins with the 2024 Super Bowl Peyton Manning and Post Malone commercialThis week, Bud Light released a new ad with comedian Shane Gillis — and it perfectly reflects the brotherly, frivolous character of the brand., over the decades, turned its commercials into touchstones of pop culture.
And dilly dilly at that.
If awareness peaked in 2023, then 2024 will be known as the year DEI ends — with corporations finally having to admit that it was all a hoax perpetrated by left-wing activists.
Recently, companies like Harley-Davidson, Ford, John Deere, and Lowe’s have changed their stance on DEI, thanks in large part to the work of those who have worked on DEI. Robbie Starbuck called him,
And now we get “Dean's Office“, in which Gillis plays a college football coach standing behind a dean trying to extract a confession of plagiarism from a star player. In exchange for the stud athlete's confession, the dean offers him a bucket of ice-cold Bud Lights. Instead, the persuasion works on Coach Gillis (his jacket reads Coach Herb), a professor, and the dean himself, who begin singing like a canary.
Drunken canary.
It's not the great “Real Men of Genius” franchise of the late 90s and early 2000s, but it's fun and nostalgic. This ad is a reminder of a time when not everything was seen from the perspective of the most annoying progressive guy.
It’s also an admission that Bud Light was wrong — dead wrong in abandoning its brand DNA and rejecting its core customer in order to jump on the diversity, equality, and inclusion bandwagon.
Specifically, in partnership with the insufferable Mulvaney in the spring of 2023: a costly move that has turned a once-beloved American brand into a bar-room outcast and led to plummeting sales.
At the time, Mulvaney, who has nearly 10 million TikTok followers, was working with nearly every company: Kate Spade, Ulta, Nike. When the influencer posted a video of herself showering with personalized Bud Light cans, it sparked a backlash. Boycotts began. Bars canceled orders. Kid Rock filed a lawsuit.
Upon further investigation, it turned out that this ill-advised change wasn't an oversight or an oversight. It was the strategy of Alyssa Hennerscheid, the VP of marketing who described herself as “the first woman to lead the world's largest beer brand.”
in March 2023 Interview with the “Make Yourself at Home” podcastShe added that she wanted to move beyond the brand's “mischievous” and “out of touch” humour and to “evolve” and “elevate”.
“What does evolution and upliftment mean? It means inclusivity … it means changing the tone,” he said. “It means running a campaign that is truly inclusive and feels lighter, brighter and different. And appeals to women and men. And representation is the heart of the revolution.”
This from the woman who proudly presided over this The most forgettable Super Bowl commercials in Bud Light historyIn which Miles Teller and his wife are seen dancing.
“Consumers young and old want the brand to represent something,” Henrscheid said at the time.
Out-of-touch executives like Heinerscheid — following in the illustrious tradition of Gillette razors calling out “toxic masculinity” — broke its message so they could fix it. But it wasn't broken to begin with.
They tried to say that beer ads are misogynistic, but most ads portray men as simple creatures and the butt of a joke. And yes, some ads feature women in bikinis. Turns out, people I love boobs too. Look at Sydney Sweeney.
Following the Mulvaney controversy, an ad for Miller Lite came out starring Ilana Glazer — apologizing for old beer ads and praising female brewers. Oh, it's flattering!
Americans want beer ads to entertain us, not preach empty progressive virtues. I look back fondly on the golden age with Bob Uecker or John Madden. Barroom fights over whether Miller Lite tasted better or was less filling. We loved seeing Spuds MacKenzie be the life of the party.
It's also poignant that Gillis would be the one to undo the damage from this unintended mistake. After being crushed by the PC Patrol in 2019, when he was hired and promptly fired by “Saturday Night Live” for previously using an Asian slur and “homophobic” language, he never complained. He took a more hardline stance in his stand-up and, surprisingly, became more popular. So big that “SNL” could no longer ignore him: He came back as a Celebrity host last February,
Through Gillis' rise, we see the gap between the cultural overlords and the real American consumers and the hungry, so-called silent majority.
Last week, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, said that Cuts in support for shareholder proposals involving Environmental and social issues reached a new low of 4.1% in its most recent annual general meeting session.
Corporations that were once afraid of ESG and afraid of being judged by investors based on the number of “inclusive” initiatives they had — which were given points by the far-left Human Rights Campaign — are now afraid to be associated with these discriminatory and divisive practices.
More people expected to give up, And I say, this Bud is for them.
