Bud Light fiasco should wake up corporate America to drop all wokery
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” blurred Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Brendan Whitworth on Friday in a belated bid to cap outrage over the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney idiocy.
Pathetic.
At best, this is a confession of sheer out-of-touch idiocy.
Shipping the “influencer” a case of cans bearing her face in hopes she’d share her joy was guaranteed to backfire.
Bud Light execs have already admitted the stunt was a bid to buy some profile with young people.
But her followers are a tiny, self-selected sliver of the larger public — people amused by a former man prancing around in a parody of girlhood.
It’s only deeply-siloed progressives (including President Joe Biden’s handlers, sigh) who’ve concluded that Dylan-worship is an “it” thing.
Any marketing professional should know better — and realize how badly appealing to wokery would annoy the brand’s existing customers.
The sales disaster is plainly epic (not to mention the stock-price collapse), or Whitworth wouldn’t be trying to put out the fire with blather like, “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
(Heck, that touchy-feely claim probably further infuriates Bud drinkers.)
Let’s hope the lesson sinks in far and wide across corporate America: Neither politics nor culture-war activism is the way to sell anything.
Better still, take it a step further: The minions telling you to embrace everything from climate hysteria to racist “diversity, equity and inclusion” ideology don’t have a clue what average Americans think.
Campuses and the cultural elite may be deep in woke delusions, but business leaders need to keep their grip on reality.
