Anhueser-Busch released a new pro-America star-spangled freedom eagle ad this week, in what feels like a desperate attempt to smooth things over with beer-chugging Americans irritated at the beer brand for hiring a grown men dressed as a little girl to be their latest spokesperson.
In the two weeks since Dylan Mulvaney, a TikTok star whose claim to fame has been dressing up as a "girl" for the past year, announced himself to be the latest hired personality for Bud Light in a cringeworthy video that peddled the stereotype of women who don't understand sports, the beer brand's stock has taken a dramatic nosedive, losing about $7 billion in market value with retailers across the country saying they're hemorrhaging customers left, right and sideways.
Well, OK - mostly right. Which seems to be a massive chunk of their consumer base.
The move also led to multiple prominent personalities, including country icons like John Rich, Kid Rock, Travis Tritt, Riley Green and Brantley Gilbert, blasting Bud Light from their large platforms - in Kid Rock's case, literally.
But the company's newest ad marks a dramatic about-face from an effeminate dude in a Hepburn-do and pearls rambling on about not knowing a thing about March Madness.
"Let me tell you a story about a beer rooted in the heart of America," begins a man whose voice sounds like he chops wood all day and has never driven his F-350 down anything but a dirt road.
— Budweiser (@budweiserusa) April 14, 2023
The minute-long, America-themed clip features typical patriotic scenes like people raising a flag up a pole, the run rising over the wheat fields of the Heartland, a Clydesdale trotting down an open road, blue-collar folks shaking hands and bearded men in ball caps sharing a beer on the front porch of a country house.
Little on the nose, wouldn't you say?
While the company hasn't exactly walked back their hiring of a man making a mockery of womanhood to market their beer to their typically traditional - and male - client base, the timing and almost overshot aim of this latest commercial couldn't be more suspect. What remains to be seen is whether it turns things around for the beer brand in the eyes of their millions of pissed off customers.
But if I were a betting woman - you know, like the millions who know a thing or two about March Madness brackets? - I'd wager "no."