Poor Bud Light parent Anheuser-Busch–they just can’t seem to get anything right these days. The brewery released a new summery ad Thursday, hoping to move beyond the Dylan Mulvaney controversy and forget the whole thing ever happened.
The public, however, has not been interested in pretending Bud Light didn’t betray its fan base and never issued a true apology. Instead, they’ve just released some mealy-mouthed corporate-sounding statements that have done little to assuage the situation.
Bud Light sales are still in the tank, A-B has lost billions in market value, and Modelo has taken over as the number one beer in ‘Merica.
If they thought this new spot would make their former customers happy, they were sorely mistaken, as social media posters have been relentlessly trolling A-B since its release. Here’s the ad, an inoffensive, mildly amusing homage to summer, with Chic’s 1979 disco number “Good Times” playing. The caption reads, “Crack a cold one: we’ve got an epic summer ahead. Sock tans included”:
It’s 60 seconds of people barbecuing, trying to stay cool in the summer heat, and doing funny things like walking through screen doors–while all of them drink Bud Light, of course.
It’s an unremarkable ad, truthfully; there are no men prancing around in dresses, there are no Pride flags, and there’s no wokeness anywhere to be found. Some of the bits were cute, although it felt a little long and could have been clipped at the 30- or 45-second spot.
Critics weren’t as nice as me, however, blasting the company at every opportunity:
This next commenter reminds people that Bud Light may be easy to drink–but it’s also easy to avoid:
“Man, they’re trying so hard,” wrote The Babylon Bee managing editor Joel Berry. One commenter thought they needed to go back to the past:
Have you learned nothing?
Go back to the 90s and mine your old content. Do a condensed version of Top Gun II with more babes. Chicks in bikinis. Smoking hot runway models painted green cast as aliens abducting some average joe to give him ice cold beer in space. Get creative, but stick to the basics.
To be fair, there was one girl in shorts and a bikini top. This guy, meanwhile, pointed out that nobody wants to be seen holding a Bud Light anymore:
Not everyone was so brutal, however. Conservative radio host Jesse Kelly actually thought they did the right thing:
Honestly, this is the smart play if they stick with it. You can’t undo what has been done. It will take lots of time. But if they hire funny writers and churn out light-hearted campaigns that make people snicker, that will do a lot over time to heal the brand.
Meh, Jesse, I’m not convinced. In a way, they’d be smarter to just lay low for a little while and not release any ads–every time they do, they just get mocked into next week.
Even better, they could release a statement (or an ad) saying, “Loyal beer drinkers, we’re sorry we broke your trust, and we won’t do it again.” Unfortunately for them, however, I don’t think that’s going to happen.