Can a camouflage garment conceal what has been denounced as internal awakeness?
According to the New York Post, Anheuser-Busch is gambling on it.
According to a report by the Post citing “sources briefed on the situation,” company representatives met with distributors in St. Louis last week and presented ideas for addressing the boycott that began when Bud Light partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
A distributor who did not wish to be identified stated that Anheuser-Busch, which got in trouble with customers over the design of a beer can featuring Mulvaney’s smiling visage, hopes the same strategy, with a different appearance, will get the company out of trouble.
Anheuser-Busch will produce camouflage-printed aluminum canisters of Budweiser and Bud Light, the Post reported on Tuesday.
The bottles will also feature images of the “Folds of Honor” program, which awards scholarships to the families of deceased and disabled service members and first responders.
The reported action recalls a campaign by rival Yuengling, the oldest brewery in the United States, to produce camouflage cans in support of Team Red, White & Blue, a veterans’ health nonprofit.
Our summer fit is back. Rock the Stars & Stripes with us and @TeamRWB all summer: https://t.co/tS8RWk4uC5 pic.twitter.com/tR7rsqTERo
— Yuengling Brewery (@yuenglingbeer) May 8, 2023
Bud Light sales have decreased since the partnership between the brand and Mulvaney gained social media attention. The trans activist stated on Instagram that the company sent him the can bearing his image to commemorate his “day 365 of womanhood.”
The Post reported that for the week ending May 6, Bud Light sales were down 23.6% compared to the same period last year, a slight increase from the previous week’s decline of 23.3%, according to data from Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ.
Unless Bud Light rejects the woke agenda and embraces traditional American values, it doesn't matter what pandering art they place on the can. You can camouflage the can, but you can't camouflage your intentions.
— Thomas Kemmett🇺🇲 (@ThomasKemmett) May 17, 2023
According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, Williams stated that sales declines of up to 20 percent could become the new norm for Bud Light.
“I don’t think the declines in sales/volume will get any worse, but I do think their negative volume trends will continue,” the analyst said.
He stated that the future impact of the boycott will become evident during Memorial Day weekend and the summer, when sales are at their peak.
Bud light cans in camouflage will only make their product even more invisible.
— GERONIMO (@WestoftheS) May 17, 2023
In an op-ed published by Fox News on Tuesday, Anson Frericks, co-founder of Strive Asset Management and former Anheuser-Busch executive, stated that he anticipates the boycott’s wrath will not have subsided.
“Conventional wisdom holds that controversies blow over, news cycles cycle, and noisy protestors eventually quiet down,” he wrote.
However, Frericks said, “All signs indicate that the Bud Light controversy isn’t going away. Why not?”
First, he noted that beer boycotters, for whom switching brands is relatively inexpensive, can see the impact of their efforts in sales figures.
Beyond that, according to Frericks, the message being sent is that beer and politics are separate realms, and neither should be mixed.
He wrote that “for every Kid Rock shooting bullets into Bud Light cans on Tik Tok or gay bar loudly dumping the brand for not being LGBT-friendly enough, there are hundreds if not thousands of Americans who just don’t want their choice in beer to be political — not pro-trans, not anti-trans, not any-trans.”
According to Frericks, Americans have lost interest in what companies believed would be feel-good social activism to attract consumers.
“The Bud Light controversy is therefore more than the latest flash point in the culture wars,” he wrote. “It is part of a larger cultural shift.
More on this story via The Western Journal:
“In 2020 and 2021, much of corporate America saw advocating for social issues as an easy way to score points with customers.” CONTINUE READING…
