By now it should be clear what was wrong with the Bud Light promotion featuring silly biological male drag queen Dylan Mulvaney,. First of all, it was incompetent: alienating your core market to score political correctness points with groups that don’t care about your product is idiotic. It was also irresponsible: investors in the company don’t own stock to be part of political grandstanding, they want to make money, and a company has an obligation not to undermine that objective. It was disrespectful too: making one’s product into a symbol of one side of a culture wars skirmish forces consumers to take sides, and is a slap in the face to consumers who don’t happen to agree with the company’s stance.
None of this was difficult to figure out, but a smug female marketing VP decided to use her job to advance her own political beliefs rather than to do what she was hired to do: sell beer. This, of course, should have meant a bonanza for the competitors of Bud Lite; if Bud’s sales were going to implode (and they have, down about 25% with no relief in sight), light beer-lovers (weird as they may be) had to go somewhere. But even before the “Drink Bud Lite, show your support for self-identifying women with penises” campaign, Miller Lite had issued the smugly woke video above during Women’s History Month. It’s worse than the Bud Lite ad, even though it won’t lose as many loyal customers:
- It is equally incompetent. Is a shrill feminist comic who says “shit” constantly and shows nothing but contempt for men likely to make a beer more attractive to male consumers but being associated with it? This is Cognitive Dissonance Scale 101, marketing basics: you want to associate a product with something or someone who registers positively with your market. There may be some things I enjoy less than being lectured by an in-your-face feminist, but the idea is to find something consumers actually like.
- The ad is also insulting, making dubious arguments left and right. Who cares that women were the original beer-makers (a questionable assertion in itself)? So what? How did Miller Lite “pay homage” to ancient beer-brewing women? Who says that’s what they were doing? Who says they had any obligation to “pay homage” to anyone? Their obligation was and is to make good beer and sell as much of it as possible.
- Miller Lite didn’t “put” women in bikinis. Women put themselves in bikinis. Then women who looked good in bikinis accepted money to appear in Miller Lite commercials. Men who are not attracted to Dylan Mulvaney, like looking at women who look good in bikinis. Women who look good in bikinis like the fact that they do—that’s one reason they wear bikinis. Illana Grazer—whoever she is—is offended by all this, making her instantly obnoxious. It’s another Cognitive Dissonance Scale 101 breach.
- The ad is also insulting with its vulgar repetition of the word shit. I’m sick of explaining this, so I’ll be brief for once: there is no difference between cute spellings that indicate shit (or fuck, or cunt, etc) or “bleeps” where the word being bleeped is obvious and saying or writing the vulgarity outright. It’s just as vulgar, and more insulting: say what you mean, and don’t pretend we’re fooled by euphemisms.
Naturally, the mainstream media is defending the ad, because the mainstream media is now a full-time propaganda machine for Woke World, and incapable of objectivity. Journalists also like the Bud Lite ad, because they couldn’t care less if a beer ad does the opposite of what ads are supposed to do, it’s a good ad because it endorses the latest progressive obsession. The thrust of the attacks on critics of the Miller ad is essentially “Republican pounce,” shifting the issue to calls for a Miller Lite boycott. Hey, there’s no need for a boycott: Miller Lite just accused its core audience of being pigs and gave them gutter-language lecture that tied the product to shit. Yum! Who wants to drink a beer that advertises itself like that, and makes it clear that it has no respect for its own market?
Ethics Alarms 
First: Mulvaney, not Mulroney.
Second: Is Coors Light going to post record revenues? Or try its own hand at implosion?
-Jut
Fixed. (Isn’t it amazing that I’ve written at least three posts about the Bud Lite fiasco and still can’t recall that “influencer’s” name? This is the Mt Palomar telescope phenomenon (George S. Kaufmann’s description of his interest in crooner Eddie Fisher’s love life)
The ad makes no sense.
Coors and Miller are both owned by SABMiller.
The smarmy Harvard/Wharton grad is the canary in the coal mine. She’s not a bug, she’s a feature. I suspect undergrad economics departments and even graduate business schools have been pushing “advocacy business management” much as journalism schools have been pushing “advocacy journalism.” There’s an annoying Heineken add that concludes, “Here’s to all the fans. Including men.” So, there you have the same thing going on in all three beer companies. SABMiller, ABInBev and Heineken. I really suspect these young MBAs have been educated, and hired, to save the world rather than increase their employers’ profitability. They’re working for the greater good. And let’s face it, they’re all rabid Marxists so we shouldn’t be surprised they want to destroy capitalism. And the shareholders can just lump it. Shareholders don’t know what’s good for anyone or anything. They’re just greedy little reactionaries.
This is ESG management.
Agreed. These companies get to tick off boxes on their DIE scorecard, profits and customers be damned.
jvb
Just watched the ad.
So, they are doing all of this to help women brewers? What women brewers? Are those brewers at Miller? If not, is Miller saying that it is helping its competition?
-Jut
I see a woke reboot of Laverne & Shirley coming to a screen near you. One will be black. The other will have a penis. Both will be insufferable.
So…The Jeffersons?
This post evokes some special memories: I remember when I was able to persuade my girlfriend to wear a bikini while cooking dinner, mowing the lawn, and washing my car. I just told her this is what authentic liberated women do and she was totally on board with that.
Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? Was that unethical?
I mean, ultimately it was her choice, right?
Wait…you didn’t “put” her into the bikini?
This topic reminded me of Al Capp, the “Lil’ Abner” cartoonist who was furiously liberal during the McCarthy era and became a vocal conservative during the Sixties. Al spoke his mind, and on a Phil Donohue show, was sked by an audience member why he always drew women with such huge breasts. Al’s answer: “Because I like ’em!“
Investors in both companies should sue, and/or vote in new leadership. They have no excuse for the consequences if they don’t.
I just wonder — do corporations even care about profit anymore, or is the feeling of superiority so satisfying that alienating half your potential customers is an acceptable risk?
The “woke” mind-virus strikes again. May all who give in to it suffer horribly.
I don’t think any of this is an accident, Glenn.
The Miller Lite people must have copied the Bud Lite people – by asking the Pabst people for advertising ideas.
Ugh… and hahhahah, as a successful woman I find his hilarious.
First of all, any woman who buys into this nonsense is NOT very bright.
Women were “put” in Bikinis???? How? Did they tie them down to comply or???
If that is true, are the “bad people” also dressing all the women who go out in barely nothing as well? How do they do that?
I just saw the women dressed (barely) the last month at a few Music Festivals near where I live. They were walking around barely clothed, and often in groups, and I didn’t see any place where they were dressed in their “no clothing” outfits. And I’m talking about tens of thousands of women!
So there’s that.
Secondly, So what if women were the first ones to brew beer? Did they also plow the fields back then and harvest the crops? Or did men do that, and they had a less labor intensive job like brewing beer? I don’t know.
And why on earth do women who are like the one in this clip continually putting men down?
When I drive by construction sites, or see HUMANS working out in the hot sun, building roads or demolishing buildings, or doing any hard labor, I don’t see women, and I don’t ever hear these same people complaining that there’s not “equal women represented” at those kinds of jobs.
Or… garbage collectors, or, or, or, or….
I am thankful that men AND women from the beginning of time, despite the crap humanity has done to itself, worked together. They sorta had to right? To SURVIVE!
We need each other.
That doesn’t mean that I am not aware of the fact SOME men have abused their positions. They have. So have women by being complicit in things.
I stand for all people to be the most they can be and realize the importance of the contributions of everyone.
I have seen this issue decline so fast and become SO full of crap it’s hard to believe that companies spend money on this… until one realizes… it’s intentional.
This decline will force us to join together once again, as in hard time, that’s what cultures have done… wars, natural disasters, etc.
Oh and did you catch the line about how the Hops are “donated” to women brewers???? OMG why??? they can’t afford to buy them?
As a business woman, I find that condescending and putting women DOWN.
I’d go on but c’mon… women LOVE being sexualized and desired by men. That’s how the species keeps going. It make me laugh to hear some women make us victims.
And, it makes me angry because there are REAL victims who often bear the brunt of this fake victim stuff. Ones who are truly forced with violence to do things.
That is not what happened to those poster girls, or most women.
Sorry for my rant. Sorta.
Hear! Hear!
A few years ago, I took my then eight-year-old grandson to a recital on the U of A campus in Tucson. It was a warm, fall, Friday evening. Scads of girl students (I guess), were strolling around in Daisy Dukes … and BRAS! I thought, man, ain’t this somethin? When I was in college, girls wore blouses and no bras. How the world has changed in strange ways but stayed the same in fifty years. I remember not being thrilled at my then high school aged daughter wearing boxers as shorts to wear to the mall. My objections were tabled, even by Mrs. OB.
“I’d go on but c’mon… women LOVE being sexualized and desired by men.”
A truism from perhaps the dawn of time, but that unmistakable phenomenon you mention aggravates lesbians to no end and aggravates the fringe angry anti-male feminists. These fine folks even tried to bring mainstream females around to their perspective on the opposite sex. Misery loves company and all.
Remember this: A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
comment eaten. 😦
It’s up. Sorry.
So much nonsense in this. She CHOSE to wear a skintight sweater and short skirt for this ad, but bemoans bikinis?? And she’s bragging about how this poor — there are other terms out there I won’t use — relation of good beer is a descendant of what women brewers made originally, which arguably was much better?? She’s demeaning both their product, and these women (nuns!) by relating the two, and basically saying that this modern day sh** is an improvement. Parenthetically, it’s immaterial who made the first beer.
I’m a particular fan of the line that “women were AMONG the very first to brew beer, ever.” The other early brewers couldn’t have been… you know… men, so… I’m betting the were iguanas.
Yeah, but nobody put iguanas in bikinis! They were respected!
Well, there’s this.
Well, now, that’s an abomination. Tge indignity.
jvb
And, she forgot the Trappist ales. But, they excluded women, so they must have been patriarchal misogynists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappists
-Jut