Go woke, go broke

[Lplus]

Seems reasonable to me. I would fathom it's more about trying to get the new demographic on board. One of the companies reps talked in the article about targeting new age ranges etc. Sticking a toe in the water, pissing off your old customers and then pissing off the new ones by back-tracking seems a tad silly.

Adding a new minority demographic makes sense. Trying to rely on that minor demographic instead of trying to do something to retain the original major demographic doesn't seem sensible either. Damned if they press ahead and damned if they retreat.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Adding a new minority demographic makes sense. Trying to rely on that minor demographic instead of trying to do something to retain the original major demographic doesn't seem sensible either. Damned if they press ahead and damned if they retreat.

False dichotomy. They simply needed to point out that everyone should enjoy good beer. There was no need to double down. Simply don’t retreat. Trust your marketing professionals with the marketing.

The interns would have made better decisions than the leadership did.

 

[Jim_MDP]

False dichotomy. They simply needed to point out that everyone should enjoy good beer. There was no need to double down. Simply don’t retreat. Trust your marketing professionals with the marketing.



The interns would have made better decisions than the leadership did.

Dont think anyone's mentioned last week's attempted AB/Harley Davidson campaign attempt.
AIUI... the conservative backlash was swift and severe, AB still hated but HD seemed to back away and was accepted for doing so.
Don't know if it factored in but I'd presume the ad campaign was in the works long before the (one custom) can fiasco.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Anheuser-Busch, still not broke, but:

Shares of Bud Light’s parent company are now down more than 20% in the two months since the beer sent personalized memorabilia to transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney, a seemingly innocuous marketing partnership that's cost the company billions amid right-wing and left-wingbacklash.

Go woke and backtrack only lose $26 billion in shareholder value.

FTFY.

 

[The Common Potato]

Anyone want to give me $1,000,000,000 for my alarm clock?

 

[RolandRat]

Anyone want to give me $1,000,000,000 for my alarm clock?

Well that's one way of getting woke and broke.

 

[dudalb]

No, technically it's not a Disney film but "Across the Spiderverse" the animated film that isa sequel to 2019's "Spiderman:Into the Spiderverse" raked in 17 Million on it's Thrusday Preview night and looks to be a massive hit, and by waht I have read it is VERY woke

 

[Brainster]

FTFY.

Reasonable; they have managed to piss everybody off while pleasing nobody (except Mulvaney, who is probably reaping millions of views from the controversy and has gained real fame). I do think Bud's blue-collar demographic is slightly larger than the transgender demo, but the recent growth in the latter versus stagnation or deterioration in the former demo may be why they did it.

 

[Brainster]

No, technically it's not a Disney film but "Across the Spiderverse" the animated film that isa sequel to 2019's "Spiderman:Into the Spiderverse" raked in 17 Million on it's Thrusday Preview night and looks to be a massive hit, and by waht I have read it is VERY woke

I remember being a bit pissed off when they originally said about Into the Spiderverse that a kid named Miles Morales was Spiderman, not Peter Parker, but the way they pulled it off in the film it was an alternate universe and there were universes where Peter was Spidey and others with SpiderGwen, and so Miles being Spidey wasn't even controversial. Well, other than the tagging (graffiti) bit which was stupid.

So I'm definitely watching this one.

 

[Armitage72]

I remember being a bit pissed off when they originally said about Into the Spiderverse that a kid named Miles Morales was Spiderman, not Peter Parker, but the way they pulled it off in the film it was an alternate universe and there were universes where Peter was Spidey and others with SpiderGwen, and so Miles being Spidey wasn't even controversial.

Miles had been in the comics for seven years before the movie. He was part of the Ultimate comic line (an alternate universe separate from the main universe) and, like the movie, became Spider-Man after Peter was killed in battle after eleven years of the Ultimate Spider-Man series. He eventually came back, because death isn't permanent in any Marvel comic universe.

 

[Jim_MDP]

Reasonable; they have managed to piss everybody off while pleasing nobody (except Mulvaney, who is probably reaping millions of views from the controversy and has gained real fame). I do think Bud's blue-collar demographic is slightly larger than the transgender demo, but the recent growth in the latter versus stagnation or deterioration in the former demo may be why they did it.

Say what?
I'm not in either demo but I'd expect the former to be 20 or 30 times the latter.
10X minimum. [emoji1]

 

[Brainster]

Say what?
I'm not in either demo but I'd expect the former to be 20 or 30 times the latter.
10X minimum. [emoji1]

Yes but the growth is all on the transgender side.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Much ink has been spent in the past about the merits of "rainbow capitalism", and how much the queer community should court and rely on corporations as members of the broader queer community. The Target and Budweiser debacle is proving a lot of the critics right that these queer friendly corporations of recent years were fair-weather friends at best, only interesting in pandering towards liberal values so long as it was easy and made them money.

Right wing reactionaries have identified that these corporations can be chased away from even milquetoast support of general liberal values if they throw a big enough fit. There's any asymmetry of fervor, liberals don't really seem to mind that much when corporations shy away from liberal values, meanwhile reactionaries know they can make up for their lack of numbers by simply being the biggest nuisance (or outright violent threat) in the room.

Libs need to take a lesson from the fascist book and start extracting a cost from corporations that waver in their loyalty to liberal values, at least if this is something they care about at all.

As far as I can see Budweiser didn't really start losing out financially until the backlash from their backing down to the far-right started kicking in. If they held tough, they would have held market share and quite possibly increased it.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Anheuser-Busch, still not broke, but:



Go woke only lose $26 billion in shareholder value.

Share price has little to nothing to do with a company's underlying financial health or real economic value these days.

The stock market is pretty much divorced from reality at this stage.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

But of course - if a company tries to expand into a minority demographic and their original majority demographic stops buying their product, the first thing they should do is thumb their noses at their base demographic.

Hmmm, yeah...

Well yes, when your main market is a dying breed doing its best to self-immolate.

 

[Brainster]

Well yes, when your main market is a dying breed doing its best to self-immolate.

And transgenders are going to repopulate the Earth? Maybe.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Reasonable; they have managed to piss everybody off while pleasing nobody (except Mulvaney, who is probably reaping millions of views from the controversy and has gained real fame). I do think Bud's blue-collar demographic is slightly larger than the transgender demo, but the recent growth in the latter versus stagnation or deterioration in the former demo may be why they did it.

Mulvaney just became sponsor poison. Views don’t matter without ads.

Reasonable people would have countered the boycott as silly overacting man-children afraid of a girl drinking their beer. But Bud Light told us to **** off. So we did. I’ve had several opportunities to call people out for being idiots about this, but I don’t.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Mulvaney just became sponsor poison. Views don’t matter without ads.

Reasonable people would have countered the boycott as silly overacting man-children afraid of a girl drinking their beer. But Bud Light told us to **** off. So we did. I’ve had several opportunities to call people out for being idiots about this, but I don’t.

I doubt Mulvaney is seriously PR damaged for her target audience of young TikTok viewers. Old weirdos throwing a fit because they don't like how kids these days act isn't exactly that strange.

I have to admit that I had never even heard of Mulvaney before this recent freakout. Maybe Mulvaney is not going to be attractive for mega sponsorship deals with the broadest possible audience, but I would be surprised if this whole debacle hasn't resulted in a boost in her clout within the more niche circles she's part of.

Young people love mocking out of touch, enraged Boomers. Mulvaney is probably fine.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Imagine if bud tried having a black spokesperson. That would just drive their white market away instantly.

 

[Hercules56]

Imagine if bud tried having a black spokesperson. That would just drive their white market away instantly.

Doubtful.