The Consequences of Transing the Brand

(stay with this… watch the videos… the last two paragraphs will answer many questions regarding the state of play. -nvp)

By Matt Walsh

As a company, Bud Light has essentially gone into hiding ever since their partnership with womanhood cosplayer Dylan Mulvaney was first announced. They put out a brief statement meekly defending their decision, but then – silence. Meanwhile, the beer brand faces increasing backlash and calls for boycotts. And now we know who we can thank for this brilliant idea — or who Bud Light can thank anyway. We only need to go back a few days before the announcement to get a more in-depth defense and explanation of Bud’s terrible decision to trans the brand.

A couple of weeks ago, the vice president of marketing for Bud Light, a woman named Alissa Heinerscheid, appeared on an obscure YouTube podcast called “Make Yourself At Home,” where she went into great depth about her experience being Bud Light’s first ever female VP. She also discussed the marketing shift that she’s engineering, in an effort, she explained, to be more “inclusive” and “representative”:

So we see from the outset that this woman has, of course, completely misdiagnosed the problem. She has somehow determined that the waning interest in the brand is due to its “frat boy” image. Customers have stopped drinking Bud Light, Alissa decided, because they are concerned about its toxic masculinity and insufficient focus on diversity and equity. She imagines a scenario where the once-typical Bud Light drinker scans the options at the liquor store, almost reaches for the Bud Light 30 pack, but then pulls back and says to himself, “Never mind. I’m only buying beer from companies that have displayed an outward commitment to inclusivity and representation.” Then she imagines this consumer going up to the cashier and asking where they keep their trans-affirming beverage options.

But this is not exactly how it works in the real world. The truth is that Bud Light is declining because the product is terrible and people have other options. It tastes like carbonated tap water flavored with notes of old hay, shoveled off the floor of someone’s barn. That’s why it’s not selling as well anymore. Before the explosion of the craft beer market, people drank Anheuser-Busch products because they were forced to choose between that brand of piss water or some other brand of piss water. Most beer drinkers didn’t even know what beer was supposed to actually taste like until the proliferation of craft beer and IPAs. Now, consumers can pay three or four dollars more for real beer. The effect on Bud Light’s sales is similar to the effect on Outback Steakhouse if a restaurant that actually knows how to cook a steak moved in right next door, and only charged a couple of dollars extra. Meanwhile, compounding Bud Light’s problems, sales of beer in general — all types — have dipped in recent years as many younger people unfortunately choose to smoke weed instead. All told, Bud Light is facing many challengers, and increasingly losing the contest. That’s the real problem. But it’s not the problem that Alissa Heinerscheid wants to solve. For her, the only problem she will ever recognize — when it comes to Bud Light, or anything else — is insufficient wokeness.

Before we analyze that any further, I want to continue watching one more minute of this interview. The clip we just watched is the bit that went viral. But if you keep listening for another minute, you’ll hear something important:

There she’s explaining the thought process behind Bud Light’s most recent Super Bowl ad campaign. The commercial she’s referring to is the one where the actor Miles Teller dances with his wife to old music. Watch:

Now, the interesting thing is that if anyone had watched that ad when it first aired and then complained that it was woke, they would have been mocked for it. They would have been treated as a paranoid conspiracy theorist had they claimed that the Bud Light Super Bowl ad had a liberal bias. After all, it’s just a commercial with two people dancing in their living rooms. And yet she proudly admits that she chose that ad because it helps further her agenda to feminize the company and bring it into alignment with her Left-wing values. It’s just done, in that case, in a relatively subtle way. The Dylan Mulvaney sponsorship was, on the other hand, far less subtle. And now they’re paying the price for their lack of subtlety.

Except that, from Vice President Alissa’s perspective, they are not paying a price at all. She is obviously not really concerned with Bud Light’s health as a company or its sales or its long term prospects. She almost certainly doesn’t even like the product and probably hasn’t had a single sip of it in her life. You could work at a liquor store for 30 years and never once see someone who looks like Alissa Heinerscheid walk up to the counter with a six pack of Bud Light. She doesn’t like the product, she doesn’t like the company, and she doesn’t like the customer base. She is yet another liberal woman put into a position of power within an institution, despite not understanding the fundamental point of that institution, and hating whatever she does understand about it. We’ve discussed in depth why these companies go woke — why almost every major company goes woke, and has already gone woke — and all those points still stand. But here is another reason, just as pertinent. Every institution in our country is being taken over by people who hate the institutions they are in charge of. This is true in the corporate world. This is true in government. This is especially true in the military. This is true in many of our churches. This is true even down to the level of the family, where many families are led by mothers and fathers who have no interest in marriage or parenting. They treat their children like pets or fashion accessories. Hence the proliferation of “trans kids.”

Across the spectrum, you find institutions that aren’t collapsing so much as imploding. It is a controlled demolition. An intentional act of sabotage from within. Bud Light is just one example, and certainly not the most significant or important. It’s no surprise to see this happening as the Left seizes hold of the culture. Hatred of societal institutions has always been one of the essential animating principles on the left. Self-hatred, too. As I’ve said before, leftism is a religion of self-loathing. It teaches boys to hate their masculinity, girls to hate their femininity, white people to hate their race, Americans to hate their country, westerners to hate their history and heritage, and so on. That’s where you find the engineered self-loathing at its deepest levels. Closer to the surface is Bud Light, and all the other woke corporations, managed by executives who hate the companies they run and especially hate the customers they serve. And hopefully now the feeling is mutual.