Reaction & Commentary
Now here’s a Refresh on the dilemovania video in case you missed it hi impressive carrying skills right I got some Bud Lights for us so I kept hearing about this thing called March Madness and I thought we were all just having a hectic month but it turns out it has
Something to do with sports and I’m not sure exactly which sport I look Bud Light and its parent company Anheuser-Busch are now culturally associated with transsexualism if two friends are sitting at a bar and one of them orders a Bud Light it now has a deeper cultural meaning you know this
Friend May in fact have a thing for trans women but really this is a big win for Budweiser branding campaigns are actually really difficult you know when they do succeed the customers begin associating the product with a clear image of what it represents you know case in point cigarettes they used to be
Associated with these rugged Cowboys that was the brand right Budweiser used to be associated with the American Heartland of you know the strength of Clydesdale horses people related to the brands and using the product projected that image on you the customer now people consuming Bud Light can have
The image of trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney look of course I’m half joking folks Budweiser is actually in really serious trouble Anheuser-Busch is in full damage control right now their sales are down an estimated 26 percent compared to last year they’re buying back expired beer from retailers That Couldn’t or just
Would not sell the product because customers are boycotting the brand and they’re accusing customers of believing in misinformation that triggered the boycott since they claimed they did not have any official partnership with Mulvaney they’re saying it was just a social media post and that was it but look apparently accusing your
Customers being gullible is not a winning strategy Budweisers try to change this though they’re bringing back their patriotic branding they have beer cans with camouflage print being rolled out images of the folds of Honor program which you know by the way is to help find out give financial aid to kids and
Spouses a fallen and disabled members of the US military service but look folks I’ll wager right now it’s likely not going to work and let me explain the reason is simple the Bud Light support for Dylan Mulvaney it changed the image of the brand and by successfully aligning themselves with a cultural
Movement the company is now going to have a very very difficult time to break that image and look it doesn’t help as well that a video was just on Earth from a Bud Light parent catalog a Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch from six months ago and it’s Being Framed really terribly for
Them as advocating to purge the company of white people and Men and they’re not just diverse enough apparently so there’s more work that needs to be done of course I’m not sure what that means for employees who can’t control you know what race or gender they’re born as but maybe Anheuser-Busch
Has a plan for that I don’t know look he could be the judge and whether you agree with the framing of this video let me show you you’re still 40 women 60 men still predominantly white so there’s still work to be done having a more diverse and inclusive environment will
Make us our company future proof I would like to live in a world where diversity and inclusion is so ingrained in who we are what we do that we don’t need to have a conversation about it well you know Anheuser-Busch certainly does have plenty of work to be done I
Don’t think they’re future proof just yet though like the reality is that buzz Budweiser planted itself right in the middle of a big culture war and it looks at the company hedged its bets on the wrong side at least you know with its customer base but this is a broader Trend really is
The death sentence for companies to get behind woke trans policies you know is that what it is you think the national Bud Light boycott would send a message to other companies but it appears they’re also hedging their bets that the Bud Light controversy is just a big
Fluke and it’s not working out for them Target decided to roll out a new gay pride clothing line it now has products like female bathing suits designed with the accommodation of tucking the male genitalia and a kid’s swim skirt that is designed to quote thoughtfully fit on multiple body types and gender
Expressions and target has run into controversy even deeper than this not just you know from associating itself with the Trans movement but for associating itself with a trans designer who openly promotes Satanism not even joking like they have a sweatshirt for example with the slogan cured transphobia on it
This is a target partner we’ve got the UK based designer at pralin now look it looks at the product was already taken out the company’s website in fact yesterday it was on this morning it’s gone now the link directs now to a product not available page but let me
Show you what they took down here is the archive of what was shown in that same link just this morning to show you the sweatshirt they had there now critics and Target’s decision were quick to point out some of the other programs some of the other products that
This guy actually has on the Instagram page it includes pins like one of the pink one of this pink demonic goat with the Trans symbol on its forehead and this slogan Satan respects pronouns on it and look at this the accompanying post next to it says this
Satan loves you and respects who you are you’re important and valuable in this world and you deserve to treat yourself with love and respect LGBT plus people are so often referred to as being a product of Satan or going against God’s will so fine we’ll hang out with Satan instead
Now look none of this seems to matter to Target their CEO Brian Cornell was asked about the backlash to woke capitalism on Fortune’s leadership next podcast you know last week and he responded with this he said quote I think those are just good business decisions and it’s
The right thing for society and it’s the great thing for our brand well look they took the shirt off the website this morning I don’t know what that means for them and it’s not just Target either as if you know making a nod to Bud light’s controversy and the question of
Whether anyone could outdo the Public Image tobacco Miller Light appears to have said hold my beer in fact when very first to brew beer ever from Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages to colonial America women were the ones doing the Brewing centuries later how did the industry pay homage to the
Founding mothers of beer they put us in bikinis wow look at this wild it’s time beer made it up to women so today Miller Lite is on a mission to clean up not just their the whole beer Industries well that ad was released by Miller
Light in March of this year but this did not protect it from controversy aside from being crude in terms of language and you know demonizing the former use of you know showing beautiful women and advertising campaigns uh I’m sure someone forced women to wear bathing suits right the public also had a good
Laugh at the opening statement if women were just among the first people who brewed beer well then who were the first now although it may be unfortunate to some there are still only two genders and it’s not just beer and clothes and so on even cars have gotten the woke
Treatment people managed to dig up this Ford commercial from 11 months ago it features what the car company calls it’s quote very gay Raptor watch Well look we’re still waiting to see whether the backlashing these companies is going to be as serious as what Bud Light is facing but there’s a key factor to watching all this and well it goes back to that famous line from the late conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart politics is Downstream from culture and
The idea with that was this if you want to change politics you first need to change the culture and it looks like corporate America’s attempts to change the culture are backfiring what does that tell you look as an example we can look into the line of you know one of the countries
Really cultural factories you could call it the film industry filmmakers have begun distancing themselves from woke culture and there’s a reason for it it’s hitting the box offices some of that backlash against what people view as signs of woke culture are seen as detrimental to the image of
Films you know take for example the recent Netflix adaptation of Cleopatra the company was accused of race swapping the ancient Egyptian queen who notably was of Macedonian Greek ancestry mainly Netflix turned her black and people especially of Egyptian descent they were very unhappy about this it debuted as
One of the worst audience scores in the history of television the film started with a one percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes one percent and look at since then jumped to three percent and even the professional critics seem to not like it very much right now it is a 14 rating from them
Disney’s Bud Light Year film previously was also slammed for featuring a homosexual kissing scene the film was a box office failure went against everything they expected Amazon’s one billion dollar rings of power series you know Lord of the Rings likewise is criticized for pushing woke ideologies over the story and then also
Really not adhering to token’s imagined World it also failed spectacularly so much so that’s damaging the entire company even video games aren’t free from this you know a video game from Square Enix which cost an alleged 200 million dollars from creation to marketing also turned into a massive failure and what
Culture is again being called out as the cause look of course we see where things are going from here but it looks like the culture in America is in fact shifting companies going against the tides of this culture they’re trying to push things people don’t want and because of this they are
Breaking in the waves it’s very possible that the culture shifts well we’ll see what this means Downstream
