Conservatives are constantly complaining about the left’s domination of culture, but they rarely take the actions necessary to make a difference. Corporate executives are acutely aware that offending progressive sensibilities can quickly end their careers, while offending the right carries little or no consequence. I can remember dozens of proposed conservative boycotts that folded immediately and had no effect. That’s why the Bud Light boycott was so shocking. Anheuser-Busch suffered serious financial losses that sent its stock tumbling and its executives running for cover.
Yet the company never apologized for its actions, which centered around using a transgender influencer to promote its products. Now Budweiser believes enough time has passed and is attempting to buy its way back into the hearts and minds of conservatives by paying for influential endorsements.
Don’t believe it. Conservatives must avoid snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and hold the line against a company that holds them in contempt.
Conservatives never even got the empty apology because Anheuser-Busch is still more scared of progressives, and the company has every right to be.
Bud Light is a brand built almost entirely on its popularity among the working class and red America. It is the default beer of backyard barbecues, football games, and country music concerts. No trendy urbanite or socially conscious activist would be caught dead drinking Bud Light. It is cheap beer for people who are looking to have a good time and do not care about signaling their social status. Anheuser-Busch is perfectly aware of the dynamic and has made billions of dollars by leaning into this image. Its advertisements are not aimed at progressive college professors or New York Times readers. They are aimed squarely at Joe Sixpack.
While every company feels compelled to advance the progressive agenda due to the left’s ideological dominance, Anheuser-Busch was aware that its customers were not fans.
After a trans shooter killed six people, including three children, at a Christian school in Nashville earlier this year, it would have made sense to dial back the woke propaganda and stick with endorsements from football players and country musicians. Instead, Bud Light executives decided to slap a picture of Dylan Mulvaney on the side of their beer cans.
The reaction was incredible.
Overnight a beer that had once been ubiquitous in red America suddenly became a punch line. Guys would laugh at anyone who ordered “the trans beer” at the bar, and Anheuser-Busch lost $27 billionin market value.
Despite these incredible losses, Anheuser-Busch refused to apologize to its customers. The company shuffled around a few marketing executives and released an empty statement about “getting back to basics.” But executives also knew any sign of backpedaling would been seen as a betrayal of the progressive cause. Bud Light started running more ads with guys in pickup trucks but refused to side with its customers over the woke mob, and conservatives refused to forgive. The insincere pandering and vague statements were insufficient, and the brand continued to suffer.
A new strategy
Bud Light still refuses to ask for forgiveness, but the company has developed a new strategy to regain its core market. In back-to-back episodes of Tucker Carlson’s show on X, Kid Rock and Dana White just happened to lead off their respective interviews by explaining why it was time to abandon the Bud Light boycott.
Kid Rock originally helped to kick off the viral boycott by shooting cases of Bud Light with a submachine gun and posting the videos online. But now he wanted everyone to know that while Bud Light deserved a black eye, it was time to forgive and forget.
UFC owner Dana White, whose company just received a $100 million sponsorship from Anheuser-Busch, told Carlson’s audience that patriots should be drinking gallons of Bud Light. Not exactly subtle.
Carlson claimed that Anheuser-Busch had effectively apologized by handing the UFC $100 million and that seemed like a win. I am a fan of Carlson’s work, but with all due respect, that is not an apology or a victory. If buying Dana White and Kid Rock is all it takes to end the most effective boycott in conservative history, then conservatives deserve to lose.
When the left wins a culture war victory, the results are obvious, and conservatives should demand nothing less. Progressives do not simply stop a behavior that they object to; activists ensure that the company expressly declares loyalty to progressive ideology and makes substantive changes to its corporate culture that guarantee future compliance.
Although the Mulvaney incident was particularly egregious, it was far from the first time Bud Light has gone woke. The company had previously launched six separate “Pride”-themed marketing campaigns, including cans celebrating the use of “correct pronouns.” If Anheuser-Busch can buy its way back into red America’s good graces without having to make a meaningful ideological shift, it will return to pushing a progressive agenda as soon as the marketing department believes the coast is clear.
No quarter
During the boycott I laid out four conditions for victory:
- Enemies are fired.
- Friends are hired.
- The company donates money to your patronage network.
- HR trains employees never to cross you again.
If a corporation is canceled for a marketing campaign that insults two-spirit transmen of color, an apology is not enough. The company is forced to fire everyone involved with the campaign and must hire or elevate more two-spirit trans men of color inside the organization. Money is donated to LGBTQ charities that provide scholarships to two-spirit transmen of color, and HR develops sensitivity training to ensure that no one ever offends that group again.
Conservatives never even got the empty apology because Anheuser-Busch is still more scared of progressives, and the company has every right to be.
A couple of right-of-center guys getting some advertising money is nice, but it is insufficient. Until Anheuser-Busch issues an explicit apology and, more importantly, takes substantive actions that signal a shift in the values advanced by the company, it should get no quarter.