Anheuser-Busch CMO announces Bud Light’s return and unveils future plans.

A Revival for Bud Light: Anheuser-Busch’s Marketing Team Learns from Controversy

A company executive insists that Bud Light marketers have learned their lesson. It remains to be seen whether consumers will believe it.

anheuser-busch-marketing-team-is-learning-a-lot-after-bud-light-dylan-mulvaney-controversy-cmo-says/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>The National Review reported that Marcel Marcondes, Global Chief Marketing Officer of Anheuser-Busch, has predicted a revival for the beleaguered beer brand.

“Bud Light is coming back,” Marcondes told AdAge on Monday at the Cannes Lions Festival.

Sales of the once-popular beer have plummeted since March, when consumers began boycotting the company due to its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

Marcondes insisted that Bud Light marketers have received the boycotters’ message.

“It’s tough to see the controversial and divisive debates that have been happening in the U.S. in the last couple of weeks involving lots of brands and companies, including and especially Bud Light. It’s tough because what we do is all about bringing people together,” Marcondes said.

At this stage, it is impossible to predict whether consumers will believe Marcondes and give Bud Light another chance. The most we can do is consider whether the marketing executive’s words reflect a lesson learned.

Trite phrases such as “controversial and divisive” and “bringing people together” are apt to strike the reader as the sort of empty words that might originate with an establishment candidate’s political campaign.

Marcondes’s ensuing comments, however, do leave room for optimism.

“In times like this, when things get divisive and controversial so easily, I think it’s an important wake-up call to all of us marketers first of all to be very humble. That’s what we’re doing, being very humble, and really reminding ourselves of what we should do best every day, which is to really understand our consumers,” Marcondes added.

Those two elements — humility and reconnecting with consumers — constitute the core of Bud Light’s future plans, according to Marcondes.

The marketing executive’s call to humility cannot help but appeal to consumers who are fed up with woke moralizing.

In fact, one wonders if Marcondes, when speaking of the need for humility, had in mind Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s former vice president of marketing and the person most responsible for the disastrous Mulvaney partnership.

On the other hand, Heinersheid was more a symbol of a problem than its actual source.

Every year, marketing programs and Western universities in general churn out legions of Alissa Heinerscheids.

They preach, scold and virtue-signal — all in the name of fine-sounding lies such as diversity, equity and inclusion.

The real problem for consumers, therefore, is not whether Marcondes is telling the truth. On the face of it, there is no reason to doubt his sincerity.

The real problem is that the Mulvaney campaign showed the extent to which wokeness has become institutionalized in corporate America.

Forgiveness is a central Christian tenet, so it can never be discouraged.

Furthermore, it is possible that consumers who liked drinking Bud Light will simply choose to give the company another chance.

Even if they do, however, they likely will remain alert to the larger problem of institutional wokeness.

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