For those who are unfamiliar, Alissa Heinerscheid, the marketing VP for Bud Light, became the face of the unfortunate decision to make transgender TikTok celebrity Dylan Mulvaney the face of the beer brand.
While it’s unclear who had the wonderful idea to make the radical left turn in tactics, Heinerscheid was the one who had gone on a podcast in the weeks leading up to the Mulvaney campaign and remarked, “Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor” and that she was dedicated to “shifting the tone” toward, among other things, “inclusivity” and “representation.”
Soon after this choice, the beer company faced serious losses and now it has been reported that Heinerscheid has been let go.
Over the weekend, conservative circles were sharing this amusing joke after discovering her new job status: “Alissa Heinerscheid now identifies as unemployed.”
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The joke is similar to Mulvaney’s: just as Mulvaney’s self-identification as female does not make him female, Heinerscheid’s “identifies” as unemployed does not make her unemployed. On Friday, marketing publication AdAge reported that Heinerscheid, the brand’s marketing VP for less than a year, “has taken a leave of absence.”
Meet Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing. She explains her strategy of using “inclusive” marketing to promote the brand to young people. pic.twitter.com/hFpe8YnbBc
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) April 9, 2023
However, according to AdAge, Bud Light’s owner, Belgium-based multinational AB InBev, also said in a statement that it was reducing the layers of its marketing division “so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brand’s activities” and that “these steps will help us maintain focus on the things we do best: brewing great beer for all consumers, while always making a positive impact in our communities and on our country.”
By “our country,” I’m assuming they didn’t mean Belgium. The reason Heinerscheid became the face of the Mulvaney campaign was how out-of-touch she sounded when it came to Americans who didn’t attend Harvard, her alma mater. (Where it must be said, she did some pretty “fratty” stuff.)
It’s safe to say that the leave of absence might indeed become more permanent than any “transition” Mulvaney might make, considering how hard the brand is trying to make conservative consumers forget this ever happened.
However, one Anheuser-Busch executive told Fox News that this was the “wrong bet to make.”
Anson Frericks, who spent more than ten years with the company, said on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday that the problem is that out-of-touch outsiders — including those not with the company — don’t understand what makes the brand tick.
AB InBev is now scrambling to compensate, according to Fox, including the employment of two Beltway consultants “with experience in Washington, D.C.’s conservative circles.”
“That’s the bet they’re making. I think that’s the wrong bet to make,” Frericks said during the interview.
“And I think now is the time to go back and, for companies like Anheuser-Busch, to say that, ‘Hey, moving forward for brands like Bud Light, we’re not going to be political. We’re not going to get involved in the environmental social governance movement because that’s not what the customer wants.’”
However, because of the leftist focus on cultural concerns, known as ESG, Frericks claims that an “apolitical brand” has been dragged into the culture wars by “all these so-called stakeholders, political organizations, activist organizations.”
“There’s a more fundamental problem that’s going on right now where Anheuser-Busch has to choose who it’s going to be accountable to,” he said.
“Will it be its shareholders? Or its so-called ‘stakeholders’?
“Let me explain. Historically, Anheuser-Busch has been accountable to its shareholders, which are people like firefighters, doctors, lawyers that invested in companies like Anheuser-Busch via 401(k)s or their pension plans,” he said.
“Over the last couple of years, there’s been organizations like BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard that have pushed this new model of stakeholder capitalism, asking companies like Anheuser-Busch to be accountable to all these so-called stakeholders, political organizations, activist organizations.
“And they do that by implementing ESG, or environmental social governance policies, in corporations that ask them to get involved in these controversial issues.
“But unfortunately, when you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being accountable to no one.”
The interview is below:
Frericks had a commentary piece published in The Wall Street Journal the day before Heinerscheid’s leave of absence was announced, in which he wrote that his former company “has fallen in line with other companies engaged in stakeholder capitalism,’ which prioritizes broad social issues over shareholder value.”
“It wasn’t always this way. I worked at Anheuser-Busch for 11 years, rising to U.S. president of sales and distribution before leaving in 2022. The firm was focused on increasing shareholder value and did so in part by offering a high-quality and, at the time, decidedly apolitical product: Bud Light,” he wrote.
However, thanks to investment firms getting behind the trend, “Anheuser-Busch fell in line with the ESG fad, despite evidence showing it harms shareholder value,” Frericks wrote.
“In 2020 it launched a Global Diversity and Inclusion Council. In 2021 it trained about 9,800 workers in ‘bias breaking’ and over 2,000 in ‘psychological safety.’ It subjected all senior executive to individualized ‘D&I’ — diversity and inclusion — dashboards, tracking the demographic composition of their teams.”
Here are the steps Anheuser-Busch took to try to distract from the Mulvaney controversy: A non-apologetic apology letter and a blatant attempt to make a patriotic ad so full of “Murica” overtones that it came off as self-parody:
— Anheuser-Busch (@AnheuserBusch) April 14, 2023
— Budweiser (@budweiserusa) April 14, 2023
However, Frericks contends that the problem is more complex and will not be remedied simply by rebranding some of the company’s products as “conservative” or “patriotic.”
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He added in his Wall Street Journal column that the policy “worked for successful companies like Netflix, which refused to censor Dave Chappelle’s comedy special in 2021 after certain employees claimed it was offensive.”
“Anheuser-Busch can do the same by ditching stakeholder capitalism. It can return to a strategy with proven success: focusing on the celebratory moments that bring people together and steering clear of divisive politics. Shareholders and customers can all say cheers to that,” he wrote.
Unfortunately, AB InBev is unlikely to declare itself apolitical anytime soon. After mocking its customers by making a man who “identifies” as a lady the face of its campaign, it is now identifying as blue-collar stars-and-stripes Middle America until you forget about it. I predict that as part of this strategy, Heinerscheid’s identity as a firm employee will discreetly come to an end.
The only joke left will be on the AB InBev executives who believe this will solve the problem.
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