COME TOGETHER

How Bud Light should have responded to the Dylan Mulvaney bruhaha

The most frustrating thing about the Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney circus ridiculous isn’t that the whole thing is unimaginably silly (it is). It’s not that well-meaning people have been needlessly scapegoated and fired (they have). It’s not even that neither side seems to understand the position they are defending (they don’t).

The most frustrating thing is that Anheuser-Busch missed a huge opportunity to strike a highly-effective — perhaps fatal — blow at the very heart of the most virulent plague infecting our society today: people’s abject refusal to consider a point of view other than their own.

FROM THERE TO HERE

As part of its $300M+ annual marketing budget, Bud Light decided to spend a little money on a social media influencer named Dylan Mulvaney, a minor celebrity who gained some fame documenting her gender transition on Instagram. They printed a can with Dylan’s image on it. They filmed a couple of posts. The ads were a little awkward and a little weird. To most people they were a non-event or perhaps an eye-roll moment.

But if you’re the type to see culture war battles hiding under every bush, the ads seemed to drop Bud Light behind enemy lines. The culture-warriors were not happy. And the reaction was swift.

The online community who sees itself as a regiment conscripted in that war went ape shit. A boycott was declared. A lot of “never again” promises were made. Kid Rock blew some stuff up.

Shortly thereafter, Bud Light’s sales, and A-B’s stock price, dropped of a cliff.

Then Bud Light decided to react to the reaction. Their well-stocked marketing team put their well-compensated heads together and came up with a strategy: they would publish a letter. A non-committal, soft-sell, half apology that kind of acknowledged a sort of misstep of some kind without ever really addressing anything specific.

It was exactly the sort of strategy that you would expect from a team of corporate executives and lawyers and marketers sprinkled with input from any number of initial-heavy departments: HR, PR, DEI.

The strategy did not work.

It didn’t work because they exhibited the kind of thinking and produced the kind of response that comes from a group of people desperately trying to fix a problem. How different things could have been if that same group (or perhaps a single bold/creative person in that group) had approached the issue not as a problem but as an opportunity.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN

With a little chutzpah, a little creativity, a little of that all-American gumption that Anheuser-Busch always claims to have seeping from its pores, Bud Light’s response letter could have gone something like this:

Bud Light has been under fire lately. The charge? Betraying the values that Bud Light is supposed to represent. But we don’t see it that way. You see, the value that Bud Light has always represented above all others is this: Bud Light is for everybody.

At Bud Light, we don’t carve the world up into red and blue, rich and poor, gay and straight, black and white. We make a smooth, refreshing beer that anyone can enjoy. Anyone. And the fact that people from all walks of life enjoy Bud Light is something to celebrate, not to criticize.

The people who make Bud Light live in the same communities you do. And lately, when we watch the news or read the paper or walk down the street to our local pub, we see a lot of anger. A lot of tension. A lot of hate. And we’re sick of it.

Bud Light isn’t about tearing people apart, we’re about bringing people together.

So the next time you see someone enjoying a Bud Light — someone who doesn’t look like you or act like you, someone who seems strange or odd or different — instead of making a joke or turning the other way or (God forbid) picking a fight, go over and talk to them. Buy them a Bud Light and sit with them for a minute. You’ll find it’s a lot harder to hate someone when you look them in the eye, listen to what they say, and share a beer.

We don’t know how to solve the world’s problems, but hanging out and genuinely connecting with someone over a couple of beers is a good place to start.

Humphrey Bogart said that the problem with the world is that everybody is a few drinks behind.

Catch up, America.

Not much of an open-letter reader? More of a TV kinda guy? Here’s the commercial (did someone say Super Bowl ad?) that could accompany the letter campaign:

The opening chords of Come Together by the Beatles play over a black screen.

The lyrics kick in while images of wildly different people flash onto the screen.

“Here come old flat top
He come grooving up slowly…

The song continues as a visual montage shows people from wide-ranging walks of life — gay and straight, black and white, old and young — drinking, laughing, and partying together.

“He got joo joo eyeball
He one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please”

The song crescendos into the chorus as we see Kid Rock and Dylan Mulvaney, arms wrapped around each other, laughing over a shared joke and a shared beer.

“Come together! Right now!”

Smash cut to a close-up of a frosty cold can of Bud Light being slammed down on a bar.

“Over me.”

For more multi-national-behemoth-corporation-saving ideas like these, find my link in the bio.