Despising Your Audience

We go to the business side on this one to show why Bud Light, and so many other companies, are making seemingly self destructive marketing decisions.  

Transcript

Despising Your Audience: A Conservative Business Podcast

April 2023

Because of the virulent controversy around trans people, the recent Bud Light fiasco has primarily been about Dylan Mulvaney, a man who identifies as a woman and has made a series of videos and appearances celebrating his transformation. I would note that this contraversy was not started by the right, like so much of the culture wars. As I laid out a few podcasts ago, the left acts, and the right reacts. But what is happening with the trans movement is more a cause of evolution. Often civil rights movements, pardon the word, transform from an earnest, life-or-death endeavor into a performative scam. MLK Jr becomes Al Sharpton. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference becomes Black Lives Matter and Patrice Cullors’ four mansions. James Baldwin becomes Ibram X Kendi. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony become Jane Fonda, Hillary Clinton, Oprah, her couch, and her three billion dollar bank account. So it is already with the trans movement that Renee Richards becomes Dylan Mulvaney. Having watched three or four of his videos, Mulvaney is like no woman I have ever met. Heck, my daughter and her tween friends had more poise and maturity. 

Instead, he is a pantomime of a woman as imagined as a hyper nine-year-old girl. It is more mimic than movement. Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlin is still something I am trying to wrap my mind around, not because he is trans but rather because I am old enough to remember him well before the Kardashians when, as a U.S. gold medalist in the decathlon, he was the sole of masculine athleticism. But if there is one thing I have never seen Caitlin Jenner do is prance, thank god.  

And like hucksters from eons past, Mulvaney is cashing in. Donna Karan is on board. Given their progressive ethos (witness one C. Kaepernick), Nike is as well. But the round peg and in this corporate square hole is Bud Light.  At one point, with their Clydesdales, ubiquity on football broadcasts, and general patriotic demeanor, Bud Light usually gave off a distinctive traditional, masculine nee conservative ethos. Everything that Mulvaney is not. Thus when Bud Light hired him to be their influencer, it set off a firestorm that resulted in plummeting sales, ruined distributors, and the dreaded leave of absence for Alissa Heinersheid, the V.P. of marketing behind this imbroglio.  

In a recent video, Heinersheid discussed her decision and why she went down the path with Mulvaney. It should be noted that the Vice President of Marketing of a consumer package goods staple is a pretty big deal in such an organization, so this is not some low-level functionary getting unwarranted scrutiny. And though Mulvaney gets the press, the other part is the obvious lack of understanding of her audience, or in this case, a clear rejection of them. Now given the nature of beer sales in the U.S., part of looking for new markets, new audiences, and new personas to which to sell makes sense. In a 2017 article in Forbes, after the Belgian-based InBev merged Bud Light Parent Anheuser Busch and SAB Miller, bringing the two bitter beer rivals under the same corporate structure, Tara Nurin notes of Bud Light It’s no secret that craft breweries have been chomping into macro brands like Bud and Bud Light for years, leading the corporation to purchase small breweries and cideries around the world. However, the report boasts that its craft brands are outperforming the segment. However, consumers’ current preference to trade up means that A.B. InBev’s so-called High-End craft portfolio cannibalizes its core brands.

Nevertheless, the brewery states, “We remain committed to turning around Bud Light and continue to invest the time, talent, and resources necessary to do so.” Bud Light, the leading brand of all beers in the United States, in 2012 accounted for nearly 30% of sales and 20% of total volume. Yet in 2020, Bud Light accounted for 17.8% of the total unit sales but only 9.4% of the volume sales. Given these numbers, one can understand Heinersheid’s concern. It is not like she has a total winner and screwed it up. But marketing 101is still knows all of your markets, the ones you wish to target, but the ones you already possess. And Bud Light was still the leading domestic beer brand going into 2023.

Her strategy, however, was not to expand her audience or add one but reject her audience for a new one. In the best Star Trek movie ever made, 1982’s The Wrath of Khan, we are introduced to the Genesis Project. A machine that can give life to dead planets, thus creating new opportunities for expanding populations. The issue is that if Genesis is used in a world where life already exists, it will destroy all that life in favor of the new matrix. In the wrong hands, Khan’s hands, it could be a doomsday weapon. It is probably a poor analogy to compare what Heinersheid was doing to doomsday, but I love my Star Trek references, so there it is. Heinersheid wanted to destroy her existing audience in favor of a newer, more progressive one. In other words, an audience that looked and thought like her. 

In that video I referenced earlier, Heinerscheid made sure to hit all of the requisite buzzwords. “If we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand,” Heinerscheid warned, “there will be no future for Bud Light.” “What I brought to that” endeavor, she continued, “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.” “Representation,” Heinerscheid concluded, “is sort of the heart of evolution.” She also noted, “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,”

As Charles CW Cooke wrote in National Review, “As a non-native speaker of this peculiar form of English, I feel obliged to ask what all of this actually means. Evidently, Alissa Heinerscheid believes that these unusual strings of words provided a comprehensible answer to the question she was being asked. To me, they merely invite more inquiries. Heinerscheid took over in July of 2022. Are we to conclude that, before that point, Bud Light was uninclusive, heavy, and dark? That there were large numbers of Americans who suspected that Bud Light was quietly bigoted? That the country’s bars were chock full of anguished “young drinkers” worrying audibly about the presumptive social trustworthiness of Corona versus Allagash White? And if they were, are we to believe that they’ve been assuaged by the company’s mystifying decision to place the face of a performing minstrel atop its brand?”

So many questions. Why was Heinersheid put in charge of one of America’s iconic, new blue-collar brands at the ripe old age of 38? She was part of that coveted 40 under 40 label. As I explained in a previous podcast, governmentally, we are ruled by old people but businesswise obsessed with youth. Think about an eight over 80 list that would include the likes of Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch.  

One of the answers in that world of credentialing overall, Heinersheid has that impeccable listing of graduating Cum laude from Harvard, albeit with a B.A. in English Language and Literature. Given that she would graduate somewhere in the mid-2000s, one wonders whether Shakespeare or something else was on the docket. A study published in 2015 by the American Council of Trustees And Alumni, called “The Unkindest Cut: Shakespeare in Exile,” looks at the 26 top-ranked universities in the nation — including the eight Ivy League schools — and the 26 top liberal arts colleges as ranked by this year’s U.S. News & World Report, and found more than 92 percent do not require English majors to take a course on Shakespeare.” 

But English majors and business? Heinersheid later got an MBA in Marketing from The Wharton School. Ivy, all the way. The perfect educational background to sell beer to football aficionados. Her career began her professional career began as an Associate Brand Manager for Listerine at Johnson & Johnson.  

In other words, her career is a textbook example of Millennials moving into the higher echelons of corporate America. But, unfortunately, I think some of the generation this generation that is something more to give writers talking points rather than actual cultural trends. 

But there is a clear distinction between the 1960s and 70s teachings of tolerance for all races emanating from the Civil Rights movement and a turn in the 1990s to more multi-cultural training. 

This in and of itself is a positive. But it also evolved into CRT, in which certain races are celebrated while others are denigrated. This kind of teaching certainly can be seen in Heinersheid’s favoritism for a “disadvantaged” group like Mulvaney’s over the “fratty” culture she wishes to distance the brand and herself. 

Having some 25 years of business and marketing under my belt, my question is, what the heck was the CEO thinking of hiring her in the first place? That would be Brendan Whitworth; he would have been 44 old at the time of Heinersheid’s hiring and also graduated from Harvard University, though with a stint in the Marines. And he has startlingly spent some six years in the CIA. As CEO of a $50 billion mega beer conglomerate Whitworth oversees dozens of brands, but none so significant as Bud Light. More than likely, he too wanted to genesis project his old audience.  

When I first set out to write this, particularly podcast, I began with the concept of content providers; in the case of Bud Light, marketers need to know their audiences. If, in the parlance of the Princess Bride movie, a classic military blunder is starting a land war in Asia, then the classic marketing blunder is misreading or simply not knowing your audience. I do not see a lot of ads for Wes Anderson movies on the side of NASCAR vehicles, nor do I see STP advertised outside of the Chicago Lyric Opera House. Marketing is a subject nearly as well as history; having made my living by essentially knowing my audience and providing products, content, and messaging that resonate with them. I always noted how my product could produce more significant margins when I marketed software to high-volume but thin-margined car dealers. 

When I marketed I.D. content to Chief Marketing Nurses, I put the patient at the center and, just to the right, a harried nurse of whom my offerings made their life a bit easier.  

But this is more than a lack of awareness of an audience; this is about not liking, even despising, the existing audience. “I simply don’t understand why they hired the person who was doing the marketing. If your target customer is Kid Rock, and suddenly you decide to go to RuPaul, that doesn’t make any sense,” Oxygen Financial CEO Ted Jenkin told Fox News Digital. 

This piece by Wilfred Reilly illustrates the rather odd choices made by organizations today. “Jack Daniel’s recently filmed a series of video-length, movie-quality promotional ads for Tennessee corn whiskey using the most flamboyant drag queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race. The National Basketball Association (NBA) only recently abandoned its George Floyd–era practice of literally painting “Black Lives Matter” on the hoops court and letting players wear explicitly political messages on game jerseys — making it possible to see “Racial Justice” just level “Equity” during a hard drive to the basket.

Over in football, the NFL did very much the same sort of thing and apparently has never enforced an already tepid policy against players kneeling in protest, out on the field, during the national anthem. Nike — which equips both leagues and whose legendary spokesman Michael Jordan once famously reminded a left-slanting reporter that “Republicans buy sneakers too” — has behaved similarly in recent years. The shoe giant not only gave a nine-figure-deal to most-famous kneeler Colin Kaepernick (is his signature sneaker designed for riding the bench? Marching in protest?) but also hired the unmistakably male Mulvaney to model women’s sportswear, such as sports bras.

One of my personal favorites from the smug NFL campaign was when some players got into fights or were screaming at each other only to reveal a “stop hate” phrase on the back of their helmets. The Onion or Babylon Bee could not have done better.  

So given the obvious issues with these odd marketing choices, why go there? In the case of Heinersheid, she has been put on long-term leave, and the parent has shed very hard to replace market share at an alarming rate. The NBA has leaked viewership, as has the NFL. Dick’s Sporting Good’s decision to no longer stock guns has an estimated cost of $250 million per year, a massive blow to a margin-strapped retailer competing with Walmart and Amazon. And when Harry’s Razors decided to go woke, along with Gillette (the best a man can get), who recently ran an ad depicting a father teaching his biological daughter how to shave a beard, the Daily Wire introduced Jeremy’s Razor, which became an overnight success. Since there is not a 30% growth in overall shaving, every Jeremy Razor sale had to come from one of these other brands. 

I would posit that one reason is that many of these organizations are flush. The value of an NFL team keeps increasing. Though the NBA loses fans, its T.V. deals are still in place, making solid money. And both Gillette and Anheiser Busch are part of much larger conglomerates. But there is something else at work here.  

For an answer, Wilfred turns to the great Thomas Sowell, and so shall we. In Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, the author provides the premise that there is an elite consisting of professors, bureaucrats, and, increasingly, senior business people whose role is not to cater to the needs of a constituency, but rather lead them out of their ignorant and childish ways. “The vision of the anointed is one in which ills such as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from ‘society,’ rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them as rescuers of people mistreated by ‘society.”

So Heinersheid is not misreading her market; instead, she thinks her market is just dumb, or worse, unenlightened. And fortunate for these Luddites, Alissa is here to tell them to embrace a certain set of values, such as celebrating trans people, regardless of how obvious the scam may be on Mulvaney’s part. If you think Mulvaney is a bit of a loon or that Black Lives Matters is a confidence game, that is your bigoted ignorance, and you are just not worthy of drinking Bud Light. As Sowell notes, “What is seldom part of the vision of the anointed is a concept of ordinary people as autonomous decision-makers free to reject any vision and to seek their well-being through whatever social processes they choose.”  

As Reilly notes, “Sowell claims, using a great deal of empirical data, that these folks tend to think of other Americans not as peers and countrymen so much as “the benighted” — and other more modern synonyms come easily to mind: “deplorables,” “bitter clingers” from “flyover land.” In Anointed/Benighted discourse, the goal of the Anointed isn’t an honest exchange of views so much as teaching the Benighted what the new truth is: changing and broadening their provincial little minds.

The majority of my marketing was in the B2B space, intentionally avoiding business-to-consumer. Why? Because I could have a greater impact in B2B. I could add new markets and address new audiences with the right products. The impressions are set in so much of the consumer packaged goods space. Nikes are not inexpensive sneakers but really fashion. 

McDonald’s is neither gourmet nor very healthy despite the salads, but it is tasty and consistent from store to store. 

If you want high-end coffee, go to Starbucks; less expensive; America Runs on Dunkin. And if you want a simple, not heavy, inexpensive beer with your buddies, Bud Light is the brand. One of the most complicated moves in all marketing is to take an established brand and move it to a new audience, especially in the crowded and competitive beer market. 

But Heinersheid, nor her bosses, did not care. Too “fratty,” says it all.  The loss of money might seem especially odd in light of these mistakes. But profitability, which is the lifeblood of companies, of capitalism, and (rarely if ever mentioned by the Bernie Sanders crowd) of government revenues, is less valued than in the past. In the past 30 years, we have seen banks, big and small lending organizations, car companies, semiconductor firms, steel manufacturers, and airlines bailed out by the government. For people who cannot articulate moral hazard, there is this feeling that I can perform my social justice functions, exercise my Id in service to DEI, and still there will be a job, a company, a career waiting. Someone will bail me out. For an executive the age of 38, this is what they are raised on. Accountability? Consequences for one’s actions? What is that compared with “saving the world.” What is that compared with rescuing the downtrodden and putting those ignorant frat boys in their place, and serving a higher social justice?