Mapping Bud Light's new Types of Guy
Plus: Brace for a booch-on-booch deal!
The Teamsters reached a tentative agreement with Anheuser-Busch InBev earlier this week, averting (for now) what would have been the biggest strike on the company in 48 years. The union’s national negotiating team already unanimously approved the collective bargaining agreement, but nothing is a done deal until the 5,000 rank-and-filers across the country get a chance to close-read the document and give it a yay-or-nay. Voting begins Sunday. If you’re a ABI Teamster worker with something to say about the deal, get in touch: dave@dinfontay.com. I will protect your identity.
[🚨 lazy transition klaxon 🚨]
Speaking of identity… have you noticed that ABI’s flailing flagship has been constructing a very specific, somewhat incoherent vision of masculinity in its marketing on the comeback trail? After getting rolled by transphobes in April 2023, then doing a corporate impression of SideshowBobRakes.gif for the remainder of the year, Bud Light has seen better days. But as the one-year anniversary of Kid Rock shooting a bunch of America’s then-bestselling beer with an assault rifle in a trans panic draws near, it’s clear that ABI has a plan in place to restore Bud Light’s standing with centrists and conservatives.
That plan includes a bajillion dollars in ad spend, a wholesale corps that’s finally coming back to the fold, and—crucially—a different cis male celebrity to hawk Bud Light to every Type of Guy the brand can think of. Gone are the days of paying lip service to a more diverse American drinking public: a Fingers review of the brand’s official Instagram account revealed that women have been the represented in than 6% of the brand’s recent grid posts.1 Bud Light’s (bad) Super Bowl LVIII spot featured a slightly better guys-rule-girls-drool ratio—of the four protagonists, one was a woman, though pretty much everybody else in the ad, including the titular Bud Light Genie, was a man.
Which, fine, ABI is entitled to market Bud Light to whoever it wants. You can make moral and economic arguments that they’ve made dumb marketing choices throughout this fiasco (and I have), but those choices are revealing nevertheless. The clutch of frontmen Bud Light has elevated post-Mulvaney are signposts on the narrow rightward path ABI is trying to navigate through the high-stakes American political landscape, even as it claims it wants nothing to do with politics.