OPINION
by Mark Schwendau
Rumors are spreading like wildfire that Anheuser Busch’s Vice President of Marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, has been fired. Considering she cost the company a loss of 5 billion dollars in a matter of almost as many days for her decision to use a transgender woman in commercial ads as well as their likeness on some of the beer cans, it is hard to believe she would remain employed there much longer.
As recently as last weekend, I looked for her on the Internet and platforms she was posted on, like LinkedIn and Twitter. Today they are all gone.
Not to be one to beat a dead horse (I will come back to this), but I wanted to offer a different perspective on what went down. I see lefties like Heinerscheid too incompetent for the business world. They should not be employed.
Years ago, there were some memes that began to circulate on the Internet that stated, “Liberalism is a Mental Illness.” Now my parents raised me not to put people down and I never really shared these memes much but one day a well-educated friend of mine said, “You know, that is not so much a joke as it is the truth.” I was shocked, and he saw this on my face (I have relatives who are liberals whom I love very much). Then he said, “If you don’t believe me, research it for yourself. Do a deep dive on the Internet, and you will find a number of scholarly articles on this topic.”
He went on to tell me the chief attribute to identify a mentally ill liberal is their lack of a sense of humor. They seldom laugh at really funny things such as ALL the previous Anheuser Busch Bud Light commercial ad campaigns, with few exceptions so noted.
- 365 Days of Girlhood – Current One, Not Funny
- Bud Bowl
- Bud Light Daredevils
- Bud Light Party – 2016 One with Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer, Not Funny
- Budweiser Clydesdales, Some Funny and Some Just Cute
- Budweiser Frogs
- Budweiser girl
- Busch Memorial Stadium
- Busch Stadium
- Dilly Dilly
- Here Comes the King
- Miss Budweiser
- Real Men of Genius
- Michael Roarty
- Sportsman’s Park
- Spuds MacKenzie
- Superstitions (advertising campaign)
- Tapper (video game)
- The World Is Yours To Take – Not Funny
- Under the Anheuser Bush
- Up for Whatever – Not Funny
- Whassup?
Like in baseball, everybody seemingly gets three strikes before they are out:
Strike One: Back in 2016, a series of Bud Light ads were briefly aired featuring Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen stumping for such political issues as equal pay for women and respect for gender identity.
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“Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer talk about equal pay,” the Anheuser Busch Bud Light Commercial.
The commercials were so hated that Anheuser Busch has since pulled them from all their social media and video streaming platforms.
Strike Two: “The World Is Yours To Take | Lionel Messi, Neymar Jr, Raheem Sterling | FIFA World Cup 2022.”
This commercial was aired globally in conjunction with the Soccer World Cup but did not get much air time in the States.
Strike Three: “Bud Light VP Alissa Heinerscheid explains how she brought her value of inclusivity to the brand” – Fox News
This video clip which has since gone viral was part of an interview conducted by Kristin Twiford of the Make Yourself at a Home show hosted by and presented by household management app Nines on March 23.
Heinerscheid said: “I am a businesswoman. I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light; it was…this brand is in decline. It has been in decline for a very long time. And if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light.”
“So I had this super clear mandate,” she said. “It’s like, we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand. And my…what I brought to that was a belief in, okay, what does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity. It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and men.”
OPINION:
It is interesting how truly clueless those on the left are from the majority of the world. A recent article written by Dani Di Placido for Forbes with the title of “Why Does The Bud Light Backlash Feel So Desperate?” He then opens with this paragraph:
“Inclusive marketing campaigns never fail to “trigger” right-wing culture warriors, and the relentless, obsessive hostility is growing increasingly desperate, particularly the ongoing backlash to Bud Light.”
The demographics of the world are something Dani just does not seem to grasp. In this world, even though worship attendance is down in the United States, most people identify with some variety of religious faith, and virtually all of those faiths preach against the practice of sexual sin, which includes deviancy. This is not a left or right-wing cultural issue of politics. This is an issue of religious faith and one working to remain true to their God in the face of atheists and agnostics continually trying to push a narrative. It shows just how truly clueless and out of touch they are with the rest of society. Also, people without any religious affiliation can still hold a personal belief in God and His view of right from wrong.
I had a bad feeling back in 2008 when Anheuser Busch was sold off to a European rival’s hands. Back then the Anheuser-Busch Company agreed to sell itself to the Belgian brewer InBev for about $52 billion, experts briefed on the matter said, putting control of the nation’s largest beer maker and a fixture of American culture into foreign hands was not a wise move.
Then there is the issue of rice. There are countries around the world where Budweiser is not allowed to be labeled as “beer” due to the rice in its making. As one pundit recently said, “It’s not real beer, and now its spokeswoman isn’t a real woman.”
Heinerscheid is not a stupid woman. She is a Wharton School and Harvard graduate, and her professional history includes jobs at American giants such as General Mills and Johnson & Johnson. But when she referred to previous ad campaigns where she disparaged the work of Bud Light’s past branding, she proved herself unfit for the job.
But as Dad used to say, “There is book smart and practical smart.” Heinerscheid might be book-smart, but she sure isn’t practical smart.
In her interview going viral on the Internet, she says, “We had this hangover; I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”
Apparently, that “approach” involved a crash landing with no survivors!
So, at the risk of being labeled “fratty,” we all have our own favorite Bud commercials of the past, and this one is mine: “Bud Light – Horse Fart” – 2004
And in my defense, I was raised around horses, and the threat is real. Maybe people like Heinerscheid only hate this commercial because it portrays a man and woman in a traditional heterosexual relationship such that she never gets the humor.
A final concern about this entire matter is the issue of Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid’s failure to act as a fiduciary trustee to the stockholders. A fiduciary is committed to acting in the best interests of a principal or beneficiary. In this instance, absent any proof of focus group studies, market surveys, or customer polling, I am not sure the interests of the investors were respected.
The bottom line: when people drink suds, they are trying to kick back and forget the issues of the world today for just a moment. They want laughs and good times, not deep thoughts about work, politics, or sexuality.
If Bud Light sales were off before this ad campaign, as Heinerscheid says, maybe it is time to do another funny commercial campaign or cull the herd of products. After all, Anheuser Busch does brew over 40 different beers, seltzers, and malt liquors.
Time will tell if Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid remains in her position at Anheuser Busch. In her defense, somebody over her would have had to approve of this failing ad campaign. The lefties of the mainstream media are betting their money that this boycott and backlash will peter out and the loyalty to the brand will return. I think they are delusional idiots. The only thing Anheuser Busch can do now is apologize and promise to stay out of the hot-button issues of our time. What is really sad to me is this boycott is targeting the entire company and not just the Bud Light product line.
Looking at the glass half full, maybe the value of the company will go down so far that some American company will buy it back.
Copyright © 2023 by Mark S. Schwendau
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Mark S. Schwendau is a retired technology professor who has always had a sideline in news-editorial writing where his byline has been, “Bringing little known news to people who simply want to know the truth.” He classifies himself as a Christian conservative who God cast to be a realist. His website is www.IDrawIWrite.Tech.
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