Bud Light - Today We Salute You, Real Men of Marketing
It is true. You really can be your own worst enemy. Recently, Anheuser-Busch has found that out the hard way. When Alissa Heinersheid, Bud Light’s first female director of Marketing came on board, she decided that, in her words, Bud Light’s brand had become, “fratty and out of touch.” So, having a marketing degree, she knew just how to solve that. She wanted to make Bud Light “more inclusive,” and attract a new customer base that might not be thought of as traditional Bud Light drinkers. So, during March Madness college basketball season, when a lot of Bud Light might be consumed, Bud Light brought on transgender spokesperson Dylan Mulvaney to promote a Bud Light/March Madness contest to win $15,000. Bud Light had also issued Mulvaney a Bud Light beer can with his/her likeness on it celebrating what Mulvaney had touted online as his “365 Days of Girlhood.” Here is what Heinersheid did not learn in marketing school. You should probably not alienate a vast majority of your customer base to gain a small number of new customers. But that is what she did. Needless to say, going woke did not go over well, and Bud Light promptly lost roughly $5 billion in sales and stock value.
And as one might expect, a few heads rolled. Heinersheid and her boss, Daniel Blake, who oversees marketing for both Budweiser and Bud Light have both taken a “leave of absence” from the company. It is unclear whether this just means that both will be offered hefty severance packages if they both resign quietly, of if they will be fired publicly. But now, Bud Light has a big image problem, and somebody is going to have to clean it up. Bud Light recently began airing a super pro-America ad campaign featuring one of the famous Budweiser Clydesdales seeming to run across America, passing such landmarks as the St. Louis Gateway Arch, in a nod to the company’s headquarters. But former Bud Light customers were not swayed, and the commercial was given one giant “talk to the hand” online. So now what? It is going to take a while for Anheuser-Busch to make up for $5 billion worth of suds circling the drain. Maybe the whole pro-America thing was a bit over the top for a first apology to customers. But a local St. Louis radio host might have the answer to Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light’s woes. In a promo for his weekday morning show on 104.9 FM “The Patriot,” Jamie Allman had this suggestion for the head honchos at AB. Basically, you know what has worked in the past. Get all the former marketing guys together, “get the band back together, and fix it.” Even though Super Bowl ads may be in a class unto themselves, Anheuser-Busch has had some of the most memorable Super Bowl ads in the history of Super Bowl ads. From the Budweiser frogs, to the simple but silly and fun “Wassssssup?” campaign, to the moving 9/11 tribute in 2011 on the tenth anniversary of the attacks. Perhaps a replay of some of these memorable ads might diminish an ad where a dude dressed as Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is hawking Bud Light.
As consumers, we know that ad campaigns that make us laugh are the most memorable. Who could forget the Geico auto insurance caveman, as he travels through the airport on a people mover when he suddenly sees his face on a Geico ad poster that says, “so easy even a cavemen can do it.” His facial expressions and body language at the reaction to the poster alone are what made us laugh out loud at those ads. But the Bud Light ad campaigns that the guys in the old marketing band should know is gold, hands down, “real men of genius.” If there ever was a marketing emergency where the real men of genius bat signal should be activated, this is it.
Now is the perfect time to dust off those old favorites like, “Today we salute you, Mr. push-up bra inventor,” “Mr. pro-sports heckler guy,” “Mr. cell phone holster wearer,” and perhaps the most memorable of all, “Mr. nudist camp activities director,” and let them do their work. In fact, trot out the most politically incorrect of all of them. Those are the ads that people remember, make them laugh, and most importantly, sell beer. The reason the “Real Men” ad campaign was so successful, was because Bud Light, even though humorously, was not only promoting beer, but just what the ad said, real men. While the offended woke mob might screech that only selling beer to men is sexist, know where real women go to buy beer? Where real men are, and vice versa. The old school marketing guys may seem fratty and out of touch to Alissa Heinersheid, but they know how to sell beer. And while they are at it, maybe the marketing guys can borrow Frank and Louie, the Budweiser lizards, and the Bud-wei-ser- frogs.
Bud Light’s customers clearly spoke with their wallets, and now Bud Light needs to make it up to them. Oh sure, the old marketing band is good, and they could probably come up with some great new advertising, but this emergency needs some tried and true remedies. Maybe before Anheuser-Busch hires their next V.P. of marketing, they need to weed out any woke job applicants. The best way to do that, play some Real Men of Genius commercials for them. Whoever laughs the hardest, hire them on the spot.
