Go woke, go broke

[Susheel]

Well, now we'll never know as the LGBT crowd have jumped to the boycott Budweiser camp:

But isn't that too woke for you?

 

[Susheel]

The people who most publicised the Coors promotion of gay rights were the butt-hurt right-wing bigots. Most of the "woke" crowd you despise didn't even care. But many of them did find the butt-hurt tantrums strangely entertaining and "schadenfreudy". And I guess the purchase of Coors cans to just prove a point and post it on TickTok or Twitter must have really helped their bottom line. Let's face it...bigots are not generally known for commonsense.

 

[wareyin]

Well, now we'll never know as the LGBT crowd have jumped to the boycott Budweiser camp:

Do let us know when AB goes broke, will you? Or is this a case of 'now they're going to be fine because they walked back the whole being woke thing'?

 

[Brainster]

The former marketing manager behind the Mulvaney endorsement deal and her boss are heading for the unemployment line.

 

[Orphia Nay]

The former marketing manager behind the Mulvaney endorsement deal and her boss are heading for the unemployment line.

Behind a paywall but the headline just says she's taking a leave of absence.

 

[Orphia Nay]

"Companies That Get ‘Woke’ Aren’t Going Broke — They’re More Profitable Than Ever"

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/woke-companies-broke-profits-1234710724/

 

[catsmate]

Behind a paywall but the headline just says she's taking a leave of absence.

A paid leave of absence.....

 

[Brainster]

Bud Light sales for last week were down 17% year over year in dollars and 21% in volume.

 

[wareyin]

Bud Light sales for last week were down 17% year over year in dollars and 21% in volume.

Yes, boycotts often have temporary effects.

 

[marting]

Interesting paper on how social media has increased risk of bank runs and was a major factor in SVB's collapse.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/24/soc...run-risk-fueled-svbs-collapse-paper-says.html

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4422754

Abstract:

Social media fueled a bank run on Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), and the effects were felt broadly in the U.S. banking industry. We employ comprehensive Twitter data to show that preexisting exposure to social media predicts bank stock market losses in the run period even after controlling for bank characteristics related to run risk (i.e., mark-to-market losses and uninsured deposits). Moreover, we show that social media amplifies these bank run risk factors. During the run period, we find the intensity of Twitter conversation about a bank predicts stock market losses at the hourly frequency. This effect is stronger for banks with bank run risk factors. At even higher frequency, tweets in the run period with negative sentiment translate into immediate stock market losses. These high frequency effects are stronger when tweets are authored by members of the Twitter startup community (who are likely depositors) and contain keywords related to contagion. These results are consistent with depositors using Twitter to communicate in real time during the bank run.

 

[theprestige]

Bud Light sales for last week were down 17% year over year in dollars and 21% in volume.

Yes, boycotts often have temporary effects.

How temporary? A week later, (MSN reports that) Beer Business Daily reports that Bud Light sales are now down 26% in volume:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...ansgender-backlash-worsens-report/ar-AA1aBjNn

Interestingly, the lost volume in Bud Light seems to have been balanced by increased volume in Coors Light and Miller Light beers, according to Beer Business Daily. I don't think Bud is going to get those customers back at the end of the boycott.

One wonders exactly how large and lucrative Budweiser imagined Dylan Mulvaney's target demographic was going to be, in terms of light beer sales.

Anyway, how temporary?

 

[jeremyp]

How temporary? A week later, (MSN reports that) Beer Business Daily reports that Bud Light sales are now down 26% in volume:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...ansgender-backlash-worsens-report/ar-AA1aBjNn

Interestingly, the lost volume in Bud Light seems to have been balanced by increased volume in Coors Light and Miller Light beers, according to Beer Business Daily. I don't think Bud is going to get those customers back at the end of the boycott.

One wonders exactly how large and lucrative Budweiser imagined Dylan Mulvaney's target demographic was going to be, in terms of light beer sales.

Anyway, how temporary?

Is the problem that the people who are boycotting Bud Light probably haven't stopped drinking beer and may have been pleasantly surprised by the substitutions that they have made?

It's kind of like when I decided to avoid Starbucks coffee when I found out about their tax shenanigans. I found out that other coffee shops made better coffee.

 

[wareyin]

How temporary? A week later, (MSN reports that) Beer Business Daily reports that Bud Light sales are now down 26% in volume:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...ansgender-backlash-worsens-report/ar-AA1aBjNn

Interestingly, the lost volume in Bud Light seems to have been balanced by increased volume in Coors Light and Miller Light beers, according to Beer Business Daily. I don't think Bud is going to get those customers back at the end of the boycott.

One wonders exactly how large and lucrative Budweiser imagined Dylan Mulvaney's target demographic was going to be, in terms of light beer sales.

Anyway, how temporary?

If their sales are still down in 2 months time I'll be surprised. Wait til the next manufactured outrage conservatives come up with, they will forget all about Bud-light not hating a trans person enough. They've already forgotten about how LGBTQ+ friendly Coors has been.

 

[theprestige]

Is the problem that the people who are boycotting Bud Light probably haven't stopped drinking beer and may have been pleasantly surprised by the substitutions that they have made?

It's kind of like when I decided to avoid Starbucks coffee when I found out about their tax shenanigans. I found out that other coffee shops made better coffee.

Honestly I'm not seeing any problem at all. Even the shareholders at Budweiser are just getting smacked around by the invisible hand. That's a feature, not a bug.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Is the problem that the people who are boycotting Bud Light probably haven't stopped drinking beer and may have been pleasantly surprised by the substitutions that they have made?

It's kind of like when I decided to avoid Starbucks coffee when I found out about their tax shenanigans. I found out that other coffee shops made better coffee.

Well, yes, obviously, but that's the kind of thing you're trying to avoid as a company. You want people to keep buying your brand X just because that's what they've always done, and can't be bothered to go off their routine to try something else. Precisely to avoid them finding out that, ya know, Y tastes as good and is actually cheaper.

Just like, to pick an (AFAIK) neutral example to the whole woke brouhaha, people pick their next computer with an Intel CPU and NVidia card just because that's what they had in their previous computer, some 10 years ago, and can't be bothered to spend a month researching the latest benchmarks. (Not pointing fingers. I've been guilty about it myself on various domains.)

Additionally, there's the whole marketing and PR to skew the choice by adding some unrelated criteria into your decision. Like, buy Marlboro cigarettes because cowboys are cool. Or buy Coke instead of some generic cola, because look at all these young fashionable people drinking Coke, and you wouldn't want to be the unfashionable one left out.

There's a fine balance between being edgy and causing an internet $#!& storm for free publicity (see my previous thread on the Keurig Effect) and just undoing it all, because you added the "uncool" factor instead for a chunk of the population. And got that free publicity for THAT.

Much as myself I don't mind gays or transsexuals per se (though I do mind other recent aspects), replacing "cool manly men drink X" with "gay/effeminate guys drink X" is not exactly a plus for most of your target demographic. For better or worse "gay" or "effeminate" are still used as "uncool" in quite common vernacular. Yes, they shouldn't be, and I'd fully support a change of language there, but for better or worse they currently ARE. I'm baffled at why anyone who's even semi-competent in marketing would think you'd WANT that association.

(Doubly so for movies where it's not just some spurious external association like for Keurig or Nike, but you're actually putting in the movie stuff people don't like.)

But ultimately, as theprestige more concisely wrote, they're just getting slapped by the invisible hand. The market distortion bubble that their PR and marketing created just got poked. By themselves. And probably not even because they actually care about the social issues, but because someone who couldn't care less thought it's free publicity. I'm not exactly crying a river. "They call this the logical results."

 

[dudalb]

It's early, but predictions are the Disney remake of "The Little Mermaid" is headed for a big open
It has already been targeted by the anti woke crowd because the two main roles..Ariel and the Villianess are played by Afro Americans.
Puts me in a touch spot since I despise Racism, but I also despise these Live Action remakes of classic animated films. They have all sucked, without any of the charm or fun of the originals. And Little Mermiad looks no different.
I will have to come up with somehting like "I oppose the casting of the two leads, not becuast they are black but because they are live humans".

 

[Darat]

It's early, but predictions are the Disney remake of "The Little Mermaid" is headed for a big open
It has already been targeted by the anti woke crowd because the two main roles..Ariel and the Villianess are played by Afro Americans.
Puts me in a touch spot since I despise Racism, but I also despise these Live Action remakes of classic animated films. They have all sucked, without any of the charm or fun of the originals. And Little Mermiad looks no different.
I will have to come up with somehting like "I oppose the casting of the two leads, not becuast they are black but because they are live humans".

Specieist!

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Problem is -- and what actually irks me about the current "woke" push -- is that it doesn't actually matter why you think you won't or don't like it or the other movies. It doesn't matter if you just like animated girls more than Homo Sapiens, or whatever other criterion you might have. You'll be told (indirectly, not personally) that you're just finding excuses for your racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc, because OBVIOUSLY only those oppose it, and everyone who's not a reactionary and one or more of those, MUST love it. Anything else like actor performance, story, plot, pacing, etc, has completely exited the talk, and you would love it if you weren't actively opposed to female actors and BIPOC.

And, sadly, the narrative has been lapped up by BOTH sides of the brouhaha.

On one hand you have those lapping it up and CHEERING some poor storytelling as 'finally a story about women! No more having all movies made for the boys and their silly hero's journey!' (Actual dumbassery I got to read online. Never mind that the same monomyth structure has been used very successfully even for romance flicks for girls.)

And the opposing side is even sadder. They actually ALSO lapped up the explanation that it's done for some actually 'woke' agenda, and shoehorn themselves into the 'the anti-woke crowd is against it' narrative.

If you actually read or listen what those critics have to say (at least the most visible ones), they actually dissect those previous remakes you didn't like, and have some very solid explanations as to what's wrong with the writing and characterization. But they seem to believe that actually the reason they got an insufferable Mary Sue Karen actually is because someone actually cares about female empowerment or some other form of progressive message. (As opposed to a bunch of sociopathic executives who provably don't give a flip about their actual human employees, just jumping on whatever publicity bandwagon promises a ton of free publicity.) So they feel like they have to fight off the 'woke' root cause, or at least denounce it, although none of their criticisms actually require any of that.

Really none of that actually hinges on gender, race, sexuality, or anything. If you flipped genders or races around for most of those Mary Sue Karen roles (as one of many examples of bad writing) and had a white anglo-saxon male being just about omnipotent and acting like an ass to blacks and/or women, just because he dislikes those, not only it wouldn't make the story better, it would cause even more revulsion in most people. If you did a complete ass-pull deus-ex-machina to have him win against a woman, again, same deal.

Which is just flippin' sad, because it allows the real complaints to be swept under that rug.

I mean, even about the black Ariel, there are non-woke complaints, such as the scenes being in the trailers being so dark that it's at times impossible to even really make out what the also dark protagonist is DOING. Or the changes to the story. (Whether you are ok with them or not, is up to you and none of my business, but they're explanation enough for why some people complain, without -ism or -phobe being the most parsimonious go-to.) But nope, what filtered to most people, you included (not pointing fingers or anything) is just that those opposing it are anti-woke

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I mean, here's a character for you: X is a thief, and right in the opening scene, X gets 3 TEAM MATES killed or severely injured just to distract the guards. Just because X thinks they'd only slow X down. When bringing the loot back, X's gang leader is understandably pissed off. X just blows him off. The buyer shows up and reveals it's a betrayal, and he sent the city guards that way. The gang leader is even more pissed off. X tells him off and makes fun of him. The gang leader orders everyone to attack the betraying customer. X switches sides for no obvious reason, incapacitates the whole gang including the leader, tells them to bleep off, leaves with the betrayers.

There is absolutely NO setup like X's gang members or boss being horrible people, and why X would then even be a part of that gang anyway. It's just X doing it because X can show off being ultimately overpowered against the opposite sex, and (as it turns out 5 minutes later) because X's old love is on the side of the betrayers.

I just described the first 10 minutes or so of the first episode of DA: Absolution. If you didn't know X is a lesbian^*, do you need to be a mysoginistic homophobe to dislike that character? Like, if you flipped genders, and it were a white anglo-saxon male mopping the floor with a bunch of women, would it be more palatable?


^*... and hoo-boy, are those characters over-the-top carricatures of gay. Like the whole gang that forms after that betrayal has being gay or pansexual as their main or defining character trait. Like X's ONLY motivation to even join the adventure is literally X being terminally gay and wanting to follow her ex-gf around. Sorry, that's not a particularly relatable motivation or characterization, and not better in a woman than in the stereotypical guy thinking with his dick's head. I'd literally have no better empaty if it was a guy thinking with his dick's head.

Also note that EA and especially the DA franchise had gay characters all along, so that's not the explanation for why I or other people dislike it. I mean, hello? Leliana? Or you can literally seduce her as a female character, among other shenanigans. But that doesn't define their whole personality. In none of the games does she join you just because she's chasing your skirt.

 

[Hercules56]

It's early, but predictions are the Disney remake of "The Little Mermaid" is headed for a big open
It has already been targeted by the anti woke crowd because the two main roles..Ariel and the Villianess are played by Afro Americans.
Puts me in a touch spot since I despise Racism, but I also despise these Live Action remakes of classic animated films. They have all sucked, without any of the charm or fun of the originals. And Little Mermiad looks no different.
I will have to come up with somehting like "I oppose the casting of the two leads, not becuast they are black but because they are live humans".

Both mythical characters, nothing wrong with adding a little diversity there. Are people actually going to argue that mermaids, dragons, ghosts, elves, trolls, dwarfs, fairies, witches, warlocks, can only be white?? That would be very silly.