The puns were flowing like wine, or rather, beer, on social media this week when Miller Lite went viral for an ad campaign that blasted its own brand for “sexism.”
“Hold my beer, Budweiser! Miller Lite’s new feminist spokeswoman is here to cuss at you and explain why men are evil,” wrote Not the Bee.
“Miller Lite apparently wants the Bud Light boycott treatment too,” said Rogan O’Handley, a Hollywood lawyer turned conservative commentator and supporter of former President Donald Trump. “Newsflash: After a hard day’s work, working-class beer drinkers don’t want to be lectured like they’re in a gender studies class at SUNY-Oswego.”
The ad features Ilana Glazer, a comedian who claimed women were the first brewers in history but were betrayed by corporate America.
“From Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages to colonial America, women were the ones doing the brewing,” Glazer said. “Centuries later, how did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer? They put us in bikinis.”
To make amends, Miller Lite is buying up vintage ad art featuring women in swimwear, which it will turn into compost to support female brewers. “That good s*** helps farmers grow quality hops,” one woman explains.
Many accused Miller Lite of following the “woke” path of Bud Light, which witnessed a collapse in sales following a March Madness ad campaign featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney that prompted Anheuser-Busch to issue an apology .
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” wrote CEO Brendan Whitworth.
What many on social media failed to realize is that Miller Lite’s ad was released before Bud Light’s implosion. It had just received little attention. It’s not clear if Miller Lite’s ad will have the same effect on beer sales as Bud Light’s. Some commentators on Twitter said they appreciated the ad.
“I actually think that Miller Lite got it a lot more right than Bud Lite in how it approached a female demo,” wrote Emily Zanotti of Fox News.
That’s the nature of commercials, of course. They are subjective. What might make one person feel uncomfortable might appeal to someone else.
I’m apparently a Neanderthal who likes the old-school Miller Lite commercials, whether they feature women in bikinis or Bob Uecker masquerading as Rodney Dangerfield at a costume party. I don’t like feeling lectured. That’s just me.
People naturally have different preferences and tastes in commercials, and that’s OK. The thing is, I’m actually Miller Lite’s target demo: a 40-something male beer drinker.
This invites questions. Why are Bud Light and Miller Lite making commercials that alienate their own consumer base? More importantly, why are they wading into controversial matters such as transgenderism, third-wave feminism, and nonbinary gender at all?
The primary answer is the rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance, a term coined during a 2004 United Nations initiative (“ Who Cares Wins ”) that grades companies on social performance.
ESG was born from the idea that traditional capitalism needs to be replaced with a more caring, socially conscious capitalism that serves other “stakeholders.” And what started as “guidelines and recommendations” have become explicit standards set by ESG rating agencies that impose steep costs on publicly traded companies, especially those that don’t comply.
The thing is, companies are not jazzed about having to dance to the tune of a small cabal of central bankers and asset managers. A 2022 CNBC survey showed that while executives support ESG publicly, privately, they harbor serious concerns. Yet not playing ball is not an option.
“If a company has to do disclosures, and it has some executives who are ‘not into ESG,’ it should be thinking about the cost of not becoming more concerned,” Eileen Murray, a former executive of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, told CNBC .
Miller Lite and Bud Light drinkers have every right to be annoyed by ads they don’t like. But they should understand these publicly traded companies are playing a balancing act on who they risk alienating, their consumers or ESG puppeteers.
This article was republished with permission from the Washington Examiner.
Jon Miltimore
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. (Follow him on Substack.)
His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.
Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
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Meh. The real reason Big Beer teamed up with trannies is probably because beer grows man-boobs.
Moobs!
It’s the small hats.
There IS an option, Fight back and the people will support you.
Yes. But they can do more too. Budweiser who had a majority lock on beer drinkers before the disaster Mulvaney could have positioned themselves to go private and stick a thumb in ESG. Other companies should consider this move for ESG will destroy many brands before it is all over.
The real reason? Because the young, female ‘executives’ put in charge of the brands are leftist perverts who approve of fetishists, pedophiles, and groomers. And think (without actually being able to think) that their products are so popular with customers that customers will fall in line with whatever they do.
To put it simply: They’re woke idiots.
Most dangerous threat to what remains of The American Experiment; leftist woke liberal highly miss-educated women (and their neutered male counterparts).
I’m so sick of articles that should be 25 words or less droning on and on.
…and I thought it was satan releasing his demons on the world.
Hopefully the generations that follow the current “woke” generation realize what a mess the woke generation made of things and rejects them wholeheartedly.
The entire “Western World” is now Gomorrah. (there never was a “Sodom” – Sodomy is the ACT, not a town/city)
Everything happening today is a repeat of what happened 4000 years ago when God destroyed all the Evil on the Earth because “mankind” denied the existence of God, and worshiped Satan.
Beer corporations need to push back, you are the ones making the money. Don’t come to us crying because you’re weak and for us to just give in. Yeagling didn’t!
If you buy any of their products you are part of the problem.
Support your local craft brewer and tell all the conglomerates to go pound sand.
So how do we end ESG and CEI?
These globalist organizations who control this ESG bullshit are coming for the regular population next. They plan to have all humans backed into a corner to control their travels, spending and mind. Fortunately, they don’t realize that freedom loving Americans are going to revolt soon. We’re not China and we’re not going to be influenced by a social credit system.
Don’t try that “poor little corporations” crap on me. Big Corp is in a bind? So what? The reason Americans are fighting back is because these corporations didn’t! Instead, they are rolling over and showing their bellies to big government…exacerbating the problem. Give me a break…politicians get elected not by people but by big money and lobby kings. If the government is coercing big corp., then big corp should have played hardball and said NO…and no donations if you try that. Budweiser bellied up to the government and hopefully will fully belly up by good citizens making them pay the price for capitulating to tyranny. I fully hope for Budweiser’s total ruin!
Businesses and industry should do no (real) harm. They should conserve resources where they can, minimize pollution, follow the law (not bogus mandates), and treat their employees fairly. But their contribution to society is just that…commerce…work…economics. And they need to stay in their lane. Instead of perpetuating a tyrannical government, companies should have told politicians to pound sand. They cowered…now they’re paying for it. Good times!