On the menu today: You want to read about the culture wars? Fine, let’s talk about the culture wars. There’s just one problem with the contention that Bud Light’s decision to hire Dylan Mulvaney to tout its brand of light beer is a ham-fisted effort to increase the company’s rating in the Human Rights Campaign-managed “Corporate Equality Index.” Anheuser-Busch already has a perfect score in the Corporate Equality Index. Now, it appears that those who make the advertising decisions for Anheuser-Busch really think this is a good idea, and a key step in building the future of the brand.
The Great Bud Light War of 2023
Over on the home page, Charlie writes about Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, and what she means when she says “inclusive.”
When I heard that Heinerscheid had declared that she felt a “need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand” and that “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,” I wondered if she herself drank or enjoyed Bud Light. There’s nothing wrong with a choice to not drink Bud Light — it certainly is far from my first choice in beers — but it does raise the question of whether her decision to move the beer’s image in another direction was driven, in part, by a desire to market less to “frat” boys and more to well-educated (Wharton School and Harvard), upscale, white-collar professionals like herself.
As it turns out, the New York Post reports that she enjoyed her share of “fratty” parties back in the day.
You may have heard the contention that Bud Light’s decision to hire Dylan Mulvaney to tout its brand of light beer is a ham-fisted effort to increase the company’s rating in the “Corporate Equality Index.”
The Corporate Equality Index is an annual ranking published by the Human Rights Campaign for the past 20 years, describing itself as “the premier survey benchmarking tool on how corporations across the United States and beyond are adopting equitable workplace policies, practices and benefits for LGBTQ+ employees.” The report states that, “Ad campaigns and sponsorships further this message of company values to the public. Increasingly, ads with authentic images of LGBTQ+ people are featured in both LGBTQ+ media outlets and general press alike. Corporate philanthropic activities ranging from financial support to in-kind donations of products or services can bolster a business’s profile in the LGBTQ+ community.” Also note that a company giving to the HRC’s preferred parties and candidates can raise its score: “Corporate giving to organizations promoting LGBTQ+ health, education or political efforts further demonstrates this commitment to broader LGBTQ+ equality.”
(One notable irony is that you can be a large corporation absolutely detested by most of the Left for other issues, and still rate very highly in the HRC Corporate Equality Index. Chevron, Archer Daniels Midland, defense contractor BAE Systems, Bank of America, BlackRock, Bloomberg, BP America, Citigroup, Comcast NBCUniversal, ConocoPhillips, Deutsche Bank, Dow Chemical, and Meta (the parent company of Facebook) all scored a 100 out of 100 on the CEI. Exxon Mobil scored an 85 out of 100, and Fox Corporation scored a 75. In fact, last year, more than 800 companies achieved a perfect score.)
I would note that Bud Light is made by Anheuser-Busch, and Anheuser-Busch scored a 100 in both the 2021 and 2022 rankings by Human Rights Campaign. In other words, Anheuser-Busch does not have a problem with its ranking in the Corporate Equality Index. The company’s executives may want to keep their perfect score, but they did not have some sort of anti-gay or anti-LGBTQ+ reputation that needed to be repaired.
Perhaps this latest marketing push involving Dylan Mulvaney is just a cynical effort to keep the Human Rights Campaign from lowering the company’s rating in next year’s rankings. But I don’t think Bud Light’s marketing department had to be blackmailed or strong-armed into embracing this approach to selling their beer. There’s no discernible reluctance or discomfort when Heinerscheid talks about these subjects; in fact, she shows great enthusiasm for this approach. I think she should be taken at her word; she plays a key role in running the biggest beer brand in the world, and she wants to sell to people who, up until now, have had little or no interest in buying or drinking Bud Light. And I think she is, or at least was, convinced it was going to work.
In her recent interview on the Make Yourself at Home video series, after criticizing the “fratty, out-of-touch” humor of previous Bud Light advertising campaigns, Heinerscheid continues, “It was really important that we had another approach. . . . So long story short, [the] Super Bowl spot, I cast an incredible female choreographer who just brought incredibly positive amazing energy to the spot. We cast Miles Teller and his wife Kelly Teller, but it was really crucial to me that if you see that spot Kelly is the heartbeat of that spot you’re seeing this whole experience through Kelly she’s the beating heart. She, I would sort of argue, is sort of what propels you through that experience, and that was intentional.”
(As you may recall, lots of people liked that recent Bud Light Super Bowl commercial, featuring Miles Teller and his real-life wife Keleigh Sperry, goofily dancing to the hold music for a phone call.)
The kinds of people who end up as marketing vice presidents and advertising directors are likely to come from a certain class and have certain perspectives that come from their past experiences. They almost certainly have a four-year degree, and probably one from a good university or college, if not an Ivy League one, and they may well have an MBA or some other graduate degree. They’ve probably spent a lot of time climbing the corporate ladder and working in professional white-collar environments. They probably live and work in an urban environment, or commute in from the suburbs.
Corporate advertising executives may not all be registered Democrats or identify as progressives, but they certainly are unlikely to be outspoken conservatives or itching to swim upstream in an increasingly woke corporate culture. Their work requires collaboration, and everyone wants to be perceived as a “team player.” Even the simple act of saying, “I don’t think signing Dylan Mulvaney to pitch our beer is going to make people want to buy it or drink it” runs the risk of being perceived as a form of intolerance, or deliberately misinterpreted as intolerance by some office rival with a grudge. Remember, even progressive organizations are finding young woke employees a perpetual headache who gradually paralyze their institutions with an endless parade of grievances. Everyone is walking on eggshells, terrified of inadvertently triggering a protracted fight about whether an off-the-cuff comment reflects some sort of intolerant workplace culture.
You probably don’t find a lot of advertising executives who lack college degrees or live in rural areas. I suspect that not very many of them own guns, donate to pro-life causes, or drive a pickup truck. And I have a sneaking feeling that when advertising executives throw a party, they probably serve mixed drinks, wine, and/or a variety of beers — and if they do choose to serve Bud Light, there’s some bottles or cans left at the end of the night. In my circles, Bud Light is what you drink at the barbecue when all the good stuff is gone.
None of this means an advertising executive can’t understand customers who are different from him. But that advertising executive must want to understand customers who are different from him.
Heinerscheid’s previous gigs were at General Mills and Johnson & Johnson, where she was the associate brand manager of Listerine. Almost everybody in America, across all kinds of cultural and social lines, buys and consumes General Mills products. I’ll bet there’s at least one, and probably several, in your kitchen right now. Similarly, there’s a good chance your home has at least one, and probably several, Johnson & Johnson products. Sooner or later, everybody needs a Band-Aid. And whether or not every American uses Listerine mouthwash, we’ve probably all run into someone who should.
In other words, Heinerscheid’s previous work was about selling products to just about the broadest market possible — from upscale sophisticated urbanites to the downscale rural cultural conservatives and everyone in between. But now she’s got a mission to sell Bud Light, and it’s really difficult to imagine a scenario where Bud Light becomes the beer of choice of America’s cultural elites. There is a wide variety of options, and most of us can find beers that taste much better. Her problem is that she’s assigned to sell a product that is more appealing to the demographic she doesn’t identify with — and may not particularly like, although we should recognize that we can’t see inside her head — and that isn’t appealing to the demographic she is in.
I suspect a lot of habitual Bud Light drinkers liked Spuds McKenzie, the “whazzup” guys, and the “dilly dilly” knights. I also suspect a lot of habitual Bud Light drinkers have no idea who Dylan Mulvaney is, and they may not find the gender-transitioned social-media influencer particularly appealing, charming, or likable.
Again, you don’t need to be a farmer to sell a John Deere tractor or a Ford F-150 truck. But you probably ought to have at least some understanding of the demographic you’re trying to persuade.
It’s bad enough if the people who make America’s collective advertising decisions only come from one particular cultural, political, social, and ideological class, and don’t really know how to persuade or communicate to those outside of that class. But it’s even worse if the people making these decisions aren’t even all that interested in marketing their products to anybody outside of their class.
ADDENDUM: Thanks to the good people at Meet the Press NOW for having me on yesterday’s program to discuss Tim Scott’s presidential bid.