The Perfect Boycott

News that Anheuser Busch has replaced the woke harpy who was their VP of Marketing for Bud Light was a nice little surprise today but it doesn’t mean much.  In fact, it’s just window dressing.  The interesting thing will be to see if the beer drinking public perseveres in their desire to punish Anheuser Busch for the slap in the face, they gave them.

Now, Anheuser Busch is not a normal case.  It’s possible that the majority of people who drink Bud Light are non-leftists.  That means that a serious boycott of their product by the Right would have very serious consequences for the company.  Potentially it could get so bad that the CEO might be willing to give a real apology.  You know grovel and say exactly how infuriating and stupid it was for them to allow some elitist shrew to lecture her customers about the need to stop acting like men and act more like a mental case who dresses and acts as if he’s Audrey Hepburn.  Now that would be worth seeing and hearing.

As I said Anheuser Busch is a very unusual case.  Most companies have shown they can get away with insulting their conservative patrons.  Look at the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL.  Now the last of those is still resisting a little.  Some of the players refuse to wear the rainbow jersey.  And good for them.  But the rest of them have adopted the woke mantras without a fight.  That’s not to say it hasn’t cost them some money.  Before I stopped caring all together, I noticed that NFL stadiums were looking pretty empty after the BLM takeover and the famous kneeling campaign during the national anthem.  And I see that ESPN is losing a lot of money.  So much so that Disney is trying to spin it off.  I take these as partly the economic consequences of them disrespecting a goodly chunk of their fans.  But basically, these companies have embraced the woke agenda and it hasn’t been fatal.

And that’s what makes the Anheuser Busch situation so exciting.  Finally, we might be looking at a corporation that has no choice but to admit its mistake and change course.  After all this is not a good market right now.  Inflation is taking a huge chunk out of everyone’s paychecks and there are no woke customers who will be taking the place of the current Bud Light drinkers.  The Millennials and Zoomers drink craft beers.  Bud’s not their thing.  Losing out on the summer beer drinking season would be disastrous for the company.  So maybe this will be a very good “teachable moment.”

The only thing that hasn’t been thought about is what would qualify as an adequate reparation.  Without a doubt it requires an apology that includes the words, “We apologize for insulting our customers and we promise not to tell you how you should think and feel.”  In addition, they should do actual market research to find out what their present customer base enjoys in Bud Light advertising.  Who knows, maybe they actually enjoyed the stupid frog commercials from twenty years ago.  Or maybe they liked the beach commercials with the girls in skimpy bathing suits.  But whatever it is they should think about finding out what people like before telling them what they should like.

But what I really hope is that the boycott is permanent.  Some other beer company makes a play for the Bud Light customers using traditional American advertising themes like summer fun and actual women and men.  Anheuser Bush deserves to be made an example and allowed to crash and burn as a testament to what stupid marketing can cause.

So, let’s see what happens.  If the boycott fails it’ll be one more shovel of dirt in our grave.  One more sign that the new America is a hopeless place to live.  But let’s wait.  It’s worth finding out.  Maybe there’s a little bit of hope left.