None the Weiser

By James Lileks

Thursday, May 25, 2023

 

At this point you’d think there was nothing more to say about the Bud Light imbroglio, but it keeps getting more ridiculous. The latest move from Budweiser’s crack marketing team seems to be this: Turns out our target market likes guns, so how about we shoot ourselves in the foot again?

 

To recap: Bud Light sends a few cans of their alcohol-infused fizzy grain-water to trans performer Dylan Mulvaney, who is a manic lacquered theater kid doing a shtick as Holly Bro-Lightly. Dylan does a video, swooning over the beer swag in the tub. The standard old-guard Bud Light demographic turns away from the brand en masse, much the way the Starbucks demographic would balk if Donald Trump were hired as the new face of over-roasted seven-dollar sugar-bomb coffee drinks. Video surfaces of a Bud Light exec suggesting that the brand’s customer base was a tad too fratty for their tastes and that they wanted to expand the market to people who’d bump up the inclusivity quotient. Then the pro-trans advocates became dismayed when Bud Light did not double down and curse the boycotters. Disaster all around.

 

The most recent twist, as of press time: Bud Light will offer a can in camo dress, because that’s manly, right? You got your spectrum of guy stuff, and on the opposite end of this pony prancin’ around in hot pants in the park you got the clothes that men wear when they’re Delta Force and need to sneak into some place and pop Osama bin Laden in the gourd. So it’ll all cancel itself out! They make a million camo cans, that should do it?

 

Well, that would be a message in itself: It takes a million camo cans to equal the power of one trans-advocate can. Picture a battle scene in a Tolkien movie — hordes of camo-orcs surging on the plain towards one immensely powerful Gandalfa the White, who holds them back with a raised hand. (Gloved, with an elegant cigarette holder.) No, an exec might think, camo cans are not enough. We need ads. TV ads, placed in sports events where large, muscled men grapple in sweaty combat. You know, super-straight stuff. You have one week. We’ll meet next Monday for story pitches, and I want something good.

 

A week later, the new TV-ideas person is presenting a concept for a commercial to revivify the brand.

 

“So. Picture this. It’s a crisp September morning in New York, a brilliant blue sky. Montage: Italian man in apron arranges fruit on his stand; business-attired person of color speaks into his mobile phone with an engaging smile; mother pushes stroller through Washington Square. Suddenly everyone looks up. Switch to the famous and well-loved Budweiser Clydesdale horses. They all look up. Pull back and we see they are Pegasus Clydesdales. They all take flight. The people we’ve just seen stare upward in wonder as the flying horses attack the incoming jet planes sent to hit the Twin Towers. They beat them with their hooves and the planes fly off course and miss the towers. Reaction on the ground is awe and gratitude. A feather falls from a wing of one of the horses and we follow it as it flutters down into the hand of a guy who’s stepping out of a Bud Light delivery truck. He looks at it. Music swells. He looks up and smiles and offers a crisp salute. Cut to the flying Clydesdales; the leader nods in recognition. They fly into the sun.”

 

Silence in the boardroom. The boss finally speaks. “And you studied advertising where?”

 

“Uh — ”

 

“And you’ve been at this how long?”

 

“Uh — I’ve been — ”

 

“What’s missing from this scenario?”

 

“I — I don’t know, it seems to have every — ”

 

“First responders are riding the horses as they attack. Firefighters, ambulance drivers, nurses, all riding the horses to defeat the planes.”

 

Sighs around the room: Of course.

 

That ad wouldn’t work either. Nothing will. The brand’s funky for good. But perhaps the company will realize no one is happy and say, “Everyone involved has been shown the door.”

 

To which someone versed in corporate evasions might ask: “Were they encouraged to walk through it?”

 

“No, but they were all taken to the lobby and the door was indicated. We made eye motions that alluded to the existence of the door.”

 

And what was on the other side of the door?

 

“Okay, it’s a hallway that leads to the European division of marketing.”

 

Anyone outside the bubble might have warned Bud that the Mulvaney tie-in would not resonate with the typical consumer, because this person is annoying. But KitchenAid and Ulta and Tampax have all done collabs with this infectious free spirit! Tampax! True. They all racked up diversity/equity/inclusion points, which is a social-justice equivalent of daubing an “X” on the doorframe when the Angel of Public Relations Death roams the streets looking for your firstborn. It just buys them time, though, not forgiveness of future sins. There can be no forgiveness of future sins. Let one corporate exec note that Tampax products are not marketed to people who have penises any more than Steak-umm meat sheets are marketed to vegans, and the HR department will get the hook and yank them off stage.

 

The only solution is to kill the brand entirely and start anew. If they pour all the unsold Bud Light into freshly redesigned cans, some critics of the Dylan promotion might complain — old whine in new skins and all that — but most wouldn’t notice. Call it “Weiser Light,” insist that it was always Weiser Light inside.

 

It’s had “brand-affirming care.”