Sturm Und Drag: Bud Light Says Hold My Beer

Another day in the death of the alpha male: Bud Light, the American beer famous for its ties to pro sports and macho men (“Less Filling/ Tastes Great”) , has debuted a promotion featuring trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney to commemorate "365 Days of Girlhood,” his first year as a woman.

In Mulvaney’s honour the company created a beer can with Mulvaney’s image as a vamping hussy. In the video Mulvaney sits in a bathtub full of Bud Light tins gushing about the honour of having a beer can with Mulvaney’s image on it. Brewer Anheuser-Busch says the campaign will “authentically connect with audiences across various demographics and passion points… This commemorative can was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.”

Oh, well… in that case. Never mind. I mean, they gave Dylan a beer. What more do you need? 

Needless to say the campaign got some negative feedback from Kid Rock. Liquor stores are rejecting shipments of Bud Light. And traditional women are not amused. “It's disappointing to see someone making a mockery of females be applauded for it,” said competitive skateboarder Taylor Silverman.

That aside, the Mulvaney stunt is just another thumb in the eye from corporate America to its once-traditional market: sports-loving men. Under the banner of BLM icon Colin Kaepernick, radicals have re-invented brand marketing. Go Trans Go. 

How will the Mulvaney campaign go over? In 2019 razor-blade maker Gillette dropped its “The best a man can get” campaign in favour of introspection about #MeToo. Seven months later, Gillette’s parent company Procter & Gamble was forced to take an $8 billion write-down for the increasingly “toxic” brand.

But much has changed since then. Joe Biden became U.S. president and the sluice gates opened for aggressive re-casting of gender and racial roles. Meritocracy died. Men competing with women in sports became accepted in officialdom. The corporate world consumed with “settler guilt” has entirely surrendered to ESG and DEI and the other acronym causes.

To offer resistance is now a one-way ticket to the cultural gulag from radicals who claim "silence is violence”. Before watching a Maple Leafs game at Scotiabank Centre in Toronto one must first absorb an endless verbal pummelling on inclusion, tolerance, diversity and permission to use the space from a laundry list of 18th century indigenous stakeholders. 

Before anyone ponders this too deeply it’s best to remember that petrified corporations don’t advertise products anymore. Nor do they fixate on shareholder value. That’s so last week. Guided by their armies of high-priced gender and race consultants they now advertise attitudes and empathies. They promote virtue and inclusion. Sturm und Drag.

So when Budweiser locks labels with Dylan Mulvaney it’s not in the desire to boost sales in the tiny trans community (0.04 percent of U.S. population). No, the target market for trans-beer pitches and Gillette #MeToo lectures is the most valuable demographic in today’s politics: The audience for The View. Middle- and upper-middle class educated white liberal women. Preferably single. Politically driven to cluster around puppies and progressive values formulated by Madison Avenue in league with AOC. 

Seeing Dylan Mulvaney in a bathtub vamping with his vanity beer reassures them that they are on the right team with actress Drew Barrymore, who knelt before Mulvaney on her afternoon show. That they wear the same jersey as president Biden, who fawned over Mulvaney at the White House. That they’re one with those thrilled at the February news that Mulvaney had accepted a Queerties Groundbreaker Award in Hollywood.

Messaging in this turbulent time is created to assure them who are the bad guys and who are the good guys. And that they are definitely on the side of the angels. Some might assume that their harsh treatment at the hands of Science® during the Covid Ordeal might have driven them into the arms of skeptics. The opposite has in face happened. Stockholm syndrome has created a captive class of SJW warm troopers now ready to lock down for Climate.

Lest anyone think that this demo’s power is a passing phase, take note of the attention that political fixers now pay to the bloviations of Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and crew. It was The View’s target audience that sat out the 2016 election, allowing Trump to squeak home, and that beat Trump in 2020, where they preferred Biden’s senility over Trump’s boorishness. 

In Canada, Alberta’s NDP has moved its HQ to the unfriendly confines of Calgary in preparation for the provincial election in May. The better to capture the soccer moms and social-justice gig workers away from Danielle Smith and the UPC. The success of this process will no doubt influence the federal election where the heart-throb of The View crew, Justin Trudeau, will try to ride their coattails into a fourth term as PM. 

Who knows? If Justin gets another term using this formula Bud Light might even just cast a beer can in his honour. Trudeau Very Lite.

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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx