I keep saying that Bud Light needs to replace all its marketing people.
Because whoever they still have in charge seems clueless when they put out their tweets and their ads. They don’t seem to understand the American people–or men and women, for that matter.
Their latest effort was met with a lot of mockery, with many saying it was accidentally a great depiction of what has happened to the company.
The company tweeted out this commercial captioned with “It’s fine, this is fine” as a storm blew a picnic all over the place.
If there was a better metaphorical portrayal of the storm that hit their company, I don’t know it. This shows the storm blowing everything over, even what appears to be the blue Bud Light can. You can’t even see the Bud Light name. While there’s a real woman in this ad, she’s portrayed as obliviously devouring the watermelon, as though pretending that nothing is happening. Yet they still want to say everything is “fine, this is fine” when it isn’t.
As some wags on social media observed, this ad is an “inside look” at what’s happening to Bud Light and their cluelessness. When no one is drinking the beer and it’s just blowing away, it’s not a great look. They previously had an ad showing men grunting to try to appeal to men. They show the same lack of perception in their portrayal of the woman here. I’m not even sure what this ad is supposed to be saying to people about their brand if you take away all the controversy.
Americans let them have it for this one in a big ratio.
Meanwhile, their sales continue to plunge, and Modelo Especial was the top-selling beer brand in the United States for the second consecutive month after first taking the crown from Bud Light in May after the boycott hit. Bud Light had been the top-selling beer in 2022 and had been in first place until the controversy hit.
Modelo Especial was the top-selling beer brand for the four weeks ended July 1, with an 8.7% share of overall beer sales through retail stores for the period, while Bud Light came in second with a 7% share, according to consulting company Bump Williams, which sources data from NielsenIQ. [….]
“This boycott has now become something much more permanent than anyone anticipated,” said Neil Reid, professor of geography at the University of Toledo, who researches the beer industry.
Sales of Bud Light and Budweiser dropped 28% and 11.7%, respectively, from a year earlier, while Modelo Especial sales rose 8.5%.
The boycott also continues to affect Anheuser-Busch-affiliated brands.
Sales of Michelob Ultra — the nation’s No. 3 beer last year — were down by 4.3% in the week ended July 1 while Busch Light sales were down 8.5%, according to the Bump Williams Consulting and NielsonIQ data.
They can keep doing this kind of stuff with their ads. But ultimately, it’s not going to change what the American people think of them. Their approach to all this and the ratio they got showed that, in spades.