Originally published at: Bud Light backpedals with humiliating "patriotic" ad (video) | Boing Boing
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I really don’t want to watch a commercial for a beer I won’t ever buy regardless. Are they actually back tracking? is there anything in the ad that speaks against LGBT rights/inclusion? or are they pandering to patriotic/country boy whatever? b/c one isn’t the opposite of the other and to try and argue that it is doesn’t feel like a good tactic to take.
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It’s because they need rural america to drink themselves into a stupor to keep profits up. And I’m not joking either.
Recently the husband of a family friend (said friend’s husband is a farmer) has passed away after drinking himself into a grave. He didn’t want to stop, he operated heavy equipment around others completely sloshed quite frequently and he drove drunk all the time because the local cops wouldn’t do shit about it because he knew a ton of them. In his final days he was in pain sitting on the couch because he refused to get medical aid because he didn’t want to be told to stop drinking. He died on that same couch leaving behind his wife, kids and grandkids.
Country music doesn’t want to do shit about this problem to avoid alienating their fan base. Walked into a hardware store one day and overheard on their radio a country singer talking about losing his wife to cancer and trying to drown away that pain with booze. Seeing a bunch of people stumble around drunk frequently in a small city put me off alcohol but seeing how rural america thrash themselves like that firsthand too made me a tiny bit of a teetotaler
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Y’know what I find terribly funny about this? It’s not even American… or maybe it is? (because what’s more American than stealing an idea and locking your competition out?) Budweiser is a complete rip-off of of a Czech beer right down to the tagline “King of Beers” which was originally “Beer of Kings.”
You can buy it in America these days but Budweiser won the copyright lawsuit and they have to sell the original Budvar as Czechvar: Budweiser Budvar Brewery - Wikipedia
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I don’t think it’s that they were backtracking per se - it’s not like they said “we’re the beer that believes that marriage only exists between a woman and a man.” It’s that it completely abandoned all of the messaging of their other campaign. It seems like complete disunity from a brand perspective to have to run two separate campaigns. It was a commercial you’d expect to see from Budweiser 10-15 years ago.
The real test is whether they abandon their other campaign in favour of bland, run of the mill patriotism. That would probably be brand suicide - progressive customers won’t be moved and MAGA will see through it.
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Yeah, this isn’t backpedaling. In fact they probably already had this ad in the can for a couple years. This is the typical Bud/Clydesdales/America advertising that they’ve been producing for years.
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They’ve always stood for the same thing.
Money.
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Yep. And Budvar is a way better beer. No wonder they don’t want it confused with their brand.
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I believe in – and am moved by – this conception of the American mythos. I am also completely for LBGTQ rights. I don’t see anything in conflict between these two things. And if Budweiser wants to use its all-but-unbreakable brand name to maybe, maybe help the persuadable parts of America* that these things not only can live together, but are part of the same damned thing, I’m for it.
- If you look on the acceptance of gay marriage, America is indeed persuadable – there’s not a state in the union where it doesn’t have at least plurality support now, and in about 3/4 of the states it’s at least a majority support.
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I feel like they’ve always had multiple campaigns targeting multiple audiences though. I mean they’ve always advertised pride stuff but before it was only in niche markets like gay clubs or gay magazines.
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Right, so I think the question is whether this ad will only be run on specific platforms that target the conservative/MAGA section of the population, or is it meant to be spread widely? What is their actual brand identity here?
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Be they woke or Nazis, the beer still sucks.
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People said the same about Roe v Wade.
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I was reading the responses to that tweet and came across this. I thought it was parody but it’s real. This guy was a trump campaign director, anti vax, anti mask, wants to boycott groomers, and has a line of wackadoodle merchandise with all that nonsense.
Oh, and his beer is 20 bucks for a six pack.
America’s been drinking beer from a company that doesn’t even know which restroom to use.
That’s why we made Conservative Dad’s ULTRA RIGHT 100% Woke-Free American Beer.
If you know which restroom to use, you know what beer you should be drinking. Stop giving money to companies who hate our values.
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You’re late to the Bierfest.
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“About face” and “humiliating”? What? Is this your first Budwieser commercial you’ve seen, because they have run a bunch like that in the past.
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The problem with this logic is what the mushy middle will do when threats and political action starts ramping up. Most moderates are happy to support LGBTQ+ rights when there isn’t a threat to their standard of living. It’s what happens when the going gets tough.
Case in point, Florida, Texas. These states have enacted laws that flat out persecute LGBTQ+ populations. Places in Texas are defunding libraries. The streets are not thronging with people demanding a reversal of those positions. Part of that is that laws are being crafted that take specific aim at people’s livelihood if they choose to be an ally. However, there is also an element who just feel it’s not their fight.
While you might put this down to a couple rogue states, look at the threats to mifepristone. A vast majority of Americans support abortion access, yet it’s very possible that the drug will be ultimately be banned and access curtailed nationwide. Again, the streets are not full of people calling out the threat here. Because of the SCOTUS decision to ignore precedent on Roe v. Wade, there are a number of other laws that entrench marriage equality and minority rights that could be next.
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The scene with two manly men enjoying beer together reminds me of a possibly apocryphal rule for beer commercials in the UK: the number of men drinking beer together would always be three, because two looked like a gay couple and any more than three looked like a drunken mob.
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Me and the wife have been busy taking advantage of the nice weather here in Michigan (I’ll post in the Making, Crafting, Creating… topic) so I missed some stuff. We’ve been exhausted but boy did we make some stuff.
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I could have sworn I saw this ad way before Kid Rock decided to shoot some Bud cans.
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