Know Your Audience
One of the keys to success in business, is to know your customers. The goal is to grow your customer base, and that sometimes means trying to attract a broader audience than you currently have.
That was apparently the idea the marketing folks at Bud Light had. The beer’s vice president of marketing said that Bud Light needed to, in her words, “re-establish what this brand is about”–so that’s why they changed the slogan to “easy to drink, easy to enjoy”.
And apparently that’s why they took a biological male, who has made a living out of acting like a woman on social media, and put the person’s image on beer cans celebrating the man’s “365 days of womanhood”. The person had earlier drawn criticism from biological women for his unflattering portrayal of them as shallow…but Bud Light was all in, in an effort to make the beer “more approachable to younger drinkers”.
As you know, that backfired in a hurry because they forgot the fundamental rule of marketing…in order to get new audience members you don’t have, you can’t alienate the ones you do have.
After a painful week or more of silence, hoping to not say anything that would make the situation worse, the CEO of Anheuser Busch issued a statement Friday afternoon. Without referencing the backlash or what they did to cause it directly, the statement read, “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
All fine and good, but their miscalculation means lots of people are coming together over a different beer…in essence, anything but Bud Light. And the fallout from Bud Light’s misstep has affected Anheuser Busch’s other brands. They even had to cancel an appearance by the Budweiser Clydesdales for fear of something happening.
In the past, having the marketing person go on TV and explain the ad campaign, then having the CEO issue a non-statement-statement, would have been enough and the whole thing would have blown over. But these days, people are quite sensitive to what is happening to American culture and our way of life. And it’s going to take more than a sale price to get some people to hoist a Bud Light—or any other Anheuser Busch product–again any time soon.
