I don’t
drink much beer. I’m not a prude or a teetotaler ----just not much of a
drinker.
But I have
followed the controversy created by the brewers of Bud Light. They pulled the
stupidest stunt in advertising history during the Super Bowl. They went out of
their way to hack off corn growers.
A Bud Light
commercial claimed proudly it was the first major beer to dump corn syrup from
the brewing process. The other two major brewers, Miller and Coors use corn. Of course the Busch family in St. Louis once
owned the company but sold it to a Belgian-Brazilian brewing giant for
$52-billion dollars back in 2006.
I went to
grad school in St. Louis and my classmates who worked at AB referred to Busch
as Brothers, Uncles, sons, cousins and half-brothers----Anheuser Busch was a
family operation. Not anymore.
In fact it
is hard to find any beer company on the market owned by American interests.
Miller, while based in Milwaukee, is owned by a South African company and I
can’t seem to find a definitive answer to Coors.
In response
to Bud Light’s anti-corn message, the vice president of the National Corn
Growers shared a video of himself pouring Bud Light down a drain. His words were
succinct---if the brewer is not standing with corn growers----they are not
standing with Bud.
Who is the
marketing genius who came up with this campaign? What possible advantage is there in
hacking off farmers? None---this is the duckhead move of someone sitting in a
Belgium…or Brazilian board room.
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