Opinion
By Dave Scott, 6-23-23
Corporate marketing staffers aren’t worth their weight in three-piece suits if they don’t have the guts to stand up and proclaim why the idiotic promotional programs their bosses are suggesting will spell disaster.
They may get fired for being brutally honest and bursting out in uncontrollable laughter during the boss’s presentation, but it beats being publicly waterboarded and having their professional reputations permanently stained with classic corporate fiascos. Having “I warned them” on a resume trumps “I was part of that mess.”
Where was the marketing staff when Alissa Heinerscheid, the ostentatious ivy-draped Harvard gal initiated Bud Light’s marketing debacle to appeal to the LGBTQABC+ crowd and mocked the brand’s good ‘ole boy loyalists who hammer breakfast beers?
Nothing in her insane concept worked except the mocking part as she effectively persuaded the company’s most loyal customer base to abandon the brew. She generated a tsunami of negative publicity sending sales of Bud Light south, a direction it is still headed.
Anheuser Busch’s stunned C suite suits quickly discarded the pretentious and clueless Crimson cuckoo putting her and her immediate boss on “leave.” Nothing has been heard from the two of them in weeks and it’s doubtful there are many companies out there knocking on the door of their pit of misery with job offers.
But what about Marcel Marcondes the chief global marketing officer of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Belgium-based company that owns Bud Light? What happened to this madcap marketing maven who was in charge of this massive Brew-ha-ha?
He was last heard from in France sipping Champagne and nibbling foie gras at the lavish Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, collecting (and I am not making this up) an honor as Creative Marketer of the Year.
This is NOT a Babylon Bee or Onion satirical howler but an actual award at a real event. Marcel, not exactly a name associated with beer-drinking, back-slapping, coon-hunting good-ole-boys, gave a talk about (and I am not making this up either) his company’s “relentless focus on connecting with consumers in meaningful ways.”
As far as I know he didn’t provide any tips on how he proposes to lure Skeeter, Billy-Bob, or Spider back into the Bud Light fold after exposing them to the pretend gal Dylan Mulvaney and his tutu-wearing pals.
While we’re told that we’re not supposed to mock drag queens or transvestites, Bud Light teamed up with this guy who mocks real women with exaggerated impressions, a squeaky high pitched voice, etc. Good luck on ever attracting any real gal Bud Light drinkers in the future.
While keeping a straight face Marcondes told the crowd: “It’s tough to see the controversial and divisive debates that have been happening in the U.S. in the last couple of weeks involving lots of brands and companies, including and especially Bud Light,” he said. “It’s tough exactly because what we do is all about bringing people together.”
The tone-deaf Marcondes belongs in the Marketing Hall of Shame right up there with the Edsel, New Coke and the BP CEO who said he “would like his life back” after an oil rig explosion killed 11 of his employees and sent oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. Before Marcondes my favorite “worst” was Adidas sending an email to runners in the 2017 Boston Marathon, after the Boston Marathon bombing, congratulating them “on surviving.”
A “Marcondes Moment” could be the newest phrase for any corporate marketing concept gone terribly wrong.
Along with Bud Light a leading contender so far for this year’s award is the L.A. Dodgers baseball team for honoring the blasphemous “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” with a “community hero award.”
This group of transvestites, which has no ties to the Christian religion, describes itself as being “a leading-edge order of queer and trans nuns.” Its members perversely dress up as nuns while encouraging lewd and sacrilegious behavior.
The team’s Mother of Superiorly ‘s vile promotion will probably earn the Dodgers marketing chief a featured spot on next year’s Cannes Festival stage.
Family Research Council’s Ken Blackwell, who is part of the shareholder group of the Cincinnati Reds, has watched the grassroots pushback explode across industries over these past few months. “Most fans just want to be entertained,” he said. “This sort of ‘advocacy athleticism,’” as he called it, “is just a slippery slope.”
“It’s just like the whole Bud Light controversy,” Blackwell pointed out. “Folks are speaking with their feet and their pocketbooks. People aren’t just going to sit on the sidelines anymore and be insulted. These activists who are pushing this agenda seem to think hardworking, every day, Bible-believing people are marshmallows—and we’re not.”
If an athletic team wants to honor heroic citizens how about a ceremony to show appreciation to those brave soldiers who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. That would fill a stadium even if there was no game.
MLB now stands for Major League Buffoons. What’s next? A nude switch hitters game?
(An abridged version of the above commentary was published in the national Biz Pac Review at https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/06/23/beer-marketers-awfulness-applauded-1371169/ )
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The Lone Rangers: the Texas Rangers are resisting pressure from LGBTQ+ activists to expose their fans to the Pride idiocy.
This lone MLB team out of 30 has held steady in refusing to host a specific “Pride Night” celebration. While other teams are conducting all kinds of bizarre gimmicks including rainbow-themed jerseys or drag queens at the ceremonial opening pitch, the Rangers are saying “no thanks, we’ll pass.”
When the Western Journal reached out to the Rangers, the team responded with a statement that made it clear they have no intention of breaking their tradition anytime soon.
“Our commitment is to make everyone feel welcome and included in Rangers baseball. That means in our ballpark, at every game, and in all we do — for both our fans and our employees. We deliver on that promise across our many programs to have a positive impact across our entire community,” a team representative said in a statement that is hard to dispute.
The Rangers are in the midst of an excellent season, perhaps offering an explanation for why they are not interested in taking the focus off the baseball diamond. The team is currently in first place in its division and has the second best record in the league.
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Coming Out Time! This coming Wednesday, July 28, Anheuser-Busch had better be prepared to tell financial analysts what its plans are to fix its Bud Light marketing mess and stem their investors financial pain or it will only get worse.
Bud Light recently lost its status as the top-selling beer in the U.S. and Anheuser-Busch has lost $27 billion in stock value since March.
The only way to stop the bleeding is for Anheuser-Busch to publicly disclose a very clear plan on how it intends to revive Bud Light sales. Bud Light represents 30% of the company’s U.S. earnings, which itself constitutes 30% of global sales. That means Bud Light alone represents around 9% of total sales.
Ever since its idiotic LGBTG+ debacle its sales have been down around 30%, implying a 3% hit to earnings if the trend remains. Market observers say that if Bud Light can regain those sales, it can overdeliver the 6.5% consensus number and maybe even meet the 8% goal. If it can’t, it risks falling below the 4% floor. Analysts won’t be happy, neither will investors who are taking it in the wallet.
Analysts will be brutally blunt: “What, specifically, is the company doing to win consumers back?” So far, Anheuser-Busch has tried camouflage bottles, trotted out the Clydesdales, flag waving, deep discounts, rebates, and tripling media spending on Bud Light ads. None of it is working as beer sales continue to plummet.
The company has never addressed the problem. It never explained why sales tanked. It never once mentioned Dylan Mulvaney, the guy pretending to be a gal they teamed up with to attract the LGBTQ+ crowd. They never apologized. Nor did they mention the sad sack marketing chick they hired that insulted Bud Light’s loyal drinkers. This gal had no idea who her target audience was and now nobody has any idea where she is.
They have failed to admit they made a mistake, which in itself is a huge mistake.
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Overheard At PJD’s Beer & Wine Garden: “There are a lot of talented people with experience living in Fernandina Beach so why doesn’t the city put an ad in the local paper for the open City Manager position?” asked a patron to his pal at the popular 12 South 2nd Street watering hole.
On another topic a customer suggested out loud that clothes dryer vents should be directed to a home’s attic where “they could add extra insulation.”
There’s a lot of free, useful, useless, and interesting banter flowing at PJD’s along with more than 200 different kinds of beer.
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A Riveting Read: Good friend and American Spectator writer Larry Thornberry has an excellent review of Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio’s book “Decades of Decadence” in the June 18 Spectator. You can read it and Larry’s opinion of the articulate senator by clicking here: https://spectator.org/woke-swells-deconstructed-marco-rubio-pins-the-tail-on-the-elite-donkeys-destroying-america/
Larry’s synopsis explains how readers will find Rubio’s acute analytical intelligence and passion at work. “Decades of Decadence, is “a spot-on diagnosis of what has brought about America’s precipitous economic, moral, and political decline of the past three decades. He names names and pulls no punches. The book is a euphemism-free zone,” Larry writes.
“The nation destroyers in the piece are elites in corporate America, Wall Street, mainstream media, entertainment, universities, the teaching vocation, publishing, a dismaying percentage of the clergy, and the constellation of indignation groups that the enumerated villains cater to and in many cases fund. Most savvy conservatives understand that these are the bad guys (and gals). But Rubio gives us the history and the specifics, chapter, and verse.”
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The New Twilight Zone: Various unexplainable events ranging from Joe Biden’s incomprehensible speeches and pratfalls to California’s call for reparations and the chaos on the southern border among many others are more than deserving of Rod Serling’s mid-20th Century Twilight Zone introduction. Each week I’ll select one from the many and then use the following introduction before segueing to a description of the event:
“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”
Democrat John Fetterman, the hulking tattooed and hooded unmade bed Pennsylvanians elected to the U.S. Senate last year created entirely new words including “infructure,” “infration,” and “delagadation,” while attempting to introduce an equally unintelligible Joe Biden last Sunday in Philadelphia. Biden, who couldn’t order a Happy Meal if his life depended on it, was probably thinking: “WOW! This guy is sharp. I think he could replace Kamala.”
Prior to arriving in Philly Biden had his Connecticut audience scratching their heads when he ended his speech there exclaiming: “God save the queen.”
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Drinking, Dining & Dancing: I was invited to join a group of more than 20 folks to support hard working single mom Colleen Angel at her newly named “BeachBilly” hot dog joint at 401 South 8th Street last Saturday. We brought folding chairs and plopped down on the walkway in front of Ms. Angel’s hot dog emporium and in the parking lot. Fernandina Beach is still attempting to extort the lady for thousands of dollars in impact fees for benches and chairs, which the enterprising Ms. Angel now sells at her BeachBilly location. The group sampled a variety of hot dogs that ranged from chili dogs and Chicago dogs with prices from $6 to $18. She also features burgers, gumbo, etc. and even serves breakfast. This coming July 3rd she’ll sponsor a hot dog eating contest with winners earning cash prizes. She says the event will feature a variety of foods (pulled pork and beef brisket, etc.) other than hot dogs, live music, cornhole competition and face painting for kids. A kids hot dog eating contest starts at 5 p.m. and the adult eating contest kicks off at 6 p.m. Entry fees are $10. Folks can enter the day of the contest or sign up by calling 904/540-9109. Oh, the enterprising lady recently posted a sign displaying the location’s new name on the building above her front entrance. The city shakedown extortionists charged her $850 to do so. Ms. Angel also operates Amelia’s Best Barbershop at 1951 South 8th St. and conducts historic tours.
Republished with the author’s permission. Read The Dave Scott Blog– subscribe Free
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
