The Low Hanging Fruit
Is it woke ideology or just business?
I have been in the restaurant business for over 45 years. One could say that I make my living peddling addictive substances. However, this is not a modern hospitality phenomenon. Alcohol has been pared with food throughout all recorded history and as such, has been a part of many celebrations. Turning water into wine was the Winemaker's first miracle and wine itself represents His blood in the Holy Eucharist.
After the many millennia, what has the production and sale of alcohol evolved into? Let’s lift the hood on this classic and look at how the engine operates. let’s see how modern alcohol companies market their brands?
Many years back, a liquor rep hit the with the following statistics:
50% of all people on earth do not drink alcohol for personal, religious, or moral reasons.
Of the 50% remaining who consume alcohol, 10% consume 90% of the alcohol.
Based on those statistics, it is unsurprising that approximately 5% of the population falls into the alcohol addiction category.
Now comes the the part where I speak to the unspoken truths regarding alcohol manufacturer advertising. Big beer, liquor, and wine companies know the above-mentioned statistics. Like tobacco companies, they really don't need to market to the 10% heavy drinker population – at least not to convince them to take up their next drink. The alcohol industry already has them in spades. Most alcohol advertising is done to attract new customers in the hope that they can create another 10%'er. Sure, the advertising is focused on pretty people having fun and the obligatory "drink our products responsibility" is a shout out to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD,) but the real goal of alcohol advertisers is set the hook for the next crop of heavy drinkers.
Alcohol advertising is all about filling the pipeline. They know the 10%’ers have a limited shelf life. For the trajectory of all alcoholic behavior leads to one of four possible destinations: jails, institutions, death, or recovery. Whatever the outcome, an alcohol producer’s customer is lost. If truth in advertising was a thing, instead of portraying pretty girls in bikinis, buff guys rock climbing and hip singles drinking a beer in a trendy bar, they would show a disheveled man nervously waiting outside a liquor store at 8:00 AM, a frazzled mother putting her children to bed along with her second bottle of chardonnay or a business executive pulling a shot of vodka from a hidden bottle in his desk before attending another meeting.
We do not live in that truthful world. To that end, alcohol producers do have a target audience in mind for their advertising. Just like cults seek lonely, depressed, and spiritually vacant individuals to indoctrinate, so too does the alcohol industry seek this same demographic to “hook” onto their products. This advertising dance is akin to Screwtape instructing wormwood how to corrupt the soul of his “patient.” Screwtape instructs, “The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.” That accurate slogan is too long and confusing to the patient, I mean customer, so brilliant marketers came up with marketing “gems” like the “Dilly Dilly” campaign.
For many years, beer companies thought their sweet spot was “Bubba” in a Larry the Cable guy cut-off sleeves shirt – some redneck lout too stupid to see that he was the target of a giant industry. In 2023, Bubba is being replaced by a larger and more prolific caricature of a consumer. As it turns out, the alcohol companies are betting that the new woke brigade has a lot higher chance of not finding God than Bubba, thus, for alcohol producers, targeting woke customers will be the 21st century rendition of “low hanging fruit.”
This brings me to the recent controversy of Anheuser – Busch and their “going for broke on woke” Bud Light advertising campaign. I will not waste ink recounting the controversy because giving more publicity to the charade is superfluous. For those looking for greater detail, this NR article sums up the national reaction quite nicely, The Top Ten Reactions to Bud Lights Dylan Mulvaney Campaign.
The controversy made the typical rounds throughout the media circuits that last week. Right-wing pundits took to the airway to demagogued Anheuser – Busch for featuring a transgender media influencer as Bud Light’s spokesperson. Alissa Heinerscheid, VP of Marketing for the beer brand first came out with a statement that the Bud Light brand is as flat as their beer in a red Solo cup on a hot July afternoon, and that they need to expand their customer base (bye bye Bubba.) Apparently, the heat on Anheuser – Busch got so intense this past week that their CEO had to make a public statement on the matter. His tepid response posted on Twitter is here.
From the outside, it looks like Anheuser – Busch made an epic blunder. Their stock lost over 5 billion in market cap since the new campaign launched two weeks ago. Their signature brand as “The King of Beers” has opened itself up to mocking puns that nearly write themselves and independent distributors are feeling the pinch of declining sales of all Anheuser – Busch products currently being shunned by seemingly betrayed customers.
I am here to tell you that Anheuser – Busch did not make a marketing mistake. This was not the work of a rouge woke VP of marketing. The controversy was planned and executed from the highest office at Anheuser – Busch. And the Bud Light brand will get the boost it needs because the whole goal of this was to root out the next 10%’ers and nothing more. Budweiser has determined that the new woke religion has far more acolytes that fall into Screwtape’s sweet spot than going after rednecks, frat boys or whatever the hell the demographic target was with the Dilly Dilly campaign.
Furthermore, Anheuser – Busch knows that this controversy will soon blow over. Talk radio and Fox News will move on to the next “red meat” issue that they can throw to their easy to infuriate but “do-nothing” followers. Anheuser – Busch will discount their beer products thus placating their independent distributors. In no time, college kids and rock stars will be serving tons of Bud Light to newly enlightened fans. As previously asserted, Anheuser – Busch only needs 10% to stick with it for the long run! Quite simply, for Anheuser – Busch, it’s not woke, its business.