By Rich Lowry
Wednesday,
May 31, 2023
We should
all be grateful to Anheuser-Busch.
Some
corporation had to show how “woke” marketing could cost an iconic American
brand dearly in terms of its image, its sales, and its market capitalization.
Through
its special beer can produced for transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney,
Anheuser-Busch, in effect, volunteered for duty.
The CEO
of General Motors didn’t really say in the 1950s that what’s good for GM is
good for the country.
Still,
to paraphrase the famous misquote of auto executive Charles Wilson, what’s
terrible for Bud Light sales is now good for America. With every viral anti–Bud
Light video and twelve-pack moldering on a store shelf or in a warehouse, the
message is being sent to other corporations that they may come to regret their
gratuitous forays into the culture war.
Now,
Target has directly learned the same lesson with its Pride apparel and has
removed some clothes and made associated displays less prominent. Coupled with
the ongoing contention over Disney, whose image has taken a big hit among
Republicans, the flare-ups raise the prospect that we’ve entered a new era of
conservative-consumer power.
There’s
no doubt that the rise of social media has made it possible to spread the word
quickly about controversies, and conservatives are newly attuned to how
corporations can trespass against their values and interests.
That
said, the recent boycott successes are not necessarily replicable.
Bud
Light proved uniquely vulnerable. Its image was of an all-American product, the
go-to beer for barbecues, hunting trips and ball games — as easily enjoyed and
uncontroversial as a flyover on the Fourth of July.
The
Dylan Mulvaney promotion was hilariously off-brand. Why should a beer company,
especially an unpretentious, mass-market beer company, be associating itself
with a gay man who decides he’s a woman and prances around like a teenager?
What is it about Dylan Mulvaney that says “beer” or “Middle America”?
Mulvaney
made it worse by creating indelible, cringe-inducing imagery, dressing like
Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s with a bunch of
Bud Light in one video and relaxing in a bathtub in another.
What’s
transpired is more than a boycott; Bud Light has become a national joke. Its
signature blue-and-white cans and bottles now stand for ineptitude and
out-of-touch marketing. Picking up a six-pack shows that you aren’t in on the
joke.
The advantage
of Bud Light was that it was widely known and readily available; the problem is
that its competitors are just as readily available, and once someone stops to
think about it, it’s just as easy to pick up the Coors Light or something else
right next to the Bud Light on the shelf or in the freezer. Sure enough, as of
April 15, Bud Light’s U.S. retail-store sales dropped 17 percent from the year
prior, and sales of Coors Light and Miller Lite each grew 17 percent, according
to the Wall Street Journal.
As for
Target, even if it doesn’t get hit as hard as Anheuser-Busch, it is a
low-margin business that can’t afford unnecessary consumer turbulence.
On the
other end of the spectrum are difficult-to-boycott entities like the Los
Angeles Dodgers, who embraced an anti-Catholic gay-activist group. The offended
Dodgers fan may strenuously object, but can’t just up and start rooting for the
Los Angeles Angels.
The best
outcome of all this would be if corporations realize the potential hazards of
going along with the woke cultural tide, and resolve to stick to the 50-yard
line of American national life. No one is going to care if a boutique brand
based somewhere in blue America associates itself with every new progressive
fad. It’s the companies that are firmly in the mainstream that shouldn’t
needlessly alienate people or take sides in battles that have nothing to do
with their core business.
Bud
Light is an ongoing warning of the perils. Surely, it’s not the future old
Adolphus Busch imagined for his company, but it’s useful all the same.
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