Longboard Island Lager
Yeah, we all got a dog in this fight!
West Bound and Down
This is one of the great movies of all-time, and it all started as a a stuntman’s star-vehicle for his roommate at the time. It pretty much built the brand of Burt Reynolds and the 70s mustache. Worth a listen or even a watch. It’s so rednecky slash white-trashy, it defines an entire subset of people. My people. Folks I grew up with looked like this, acted like this, and lived like this. This wasn’t “normalized” behavior. This was real people living real lives. Drinking beer.
How Modelo became America’s new favorite beer
Modelo in. Bud Light out. Bud Light was always expendable. At it’s core, Bud Light is Lake Beer. What is Lake Beer? Of course, Google disabuses me when an epiphany deludes me into believing I’ve coined an original thought or phrase. The post below actually rates beer that tastes good. I’m talking about Bud Light.
Best Lake Beers to Drink Right Now
Tubing, boating, and paddling are all part of summer lake fun. Toast to long weekends with one of the best lake beers.
Jul 11, 2022 6:26 PM EDT
No, Lake Beer in my glossary means that one can drink 30 Bud Lights on the lake and still drive the boat onto the trailer. As long as someone else pilots the trailer down the ramp (backwards!), I got the boat!
Bud Light was ubiquitous - always there - but if it wasn’t, no biggie. Just drink the next yellow, fizzy beer. It’s not like Diet Coke fanatics. Those people are nuts. God forbid a DC drinker be subjugated to the sin of drinking a Diet Pepsi.
But all the framing and posturing by all of the “experts” that this was “inevitable”, that Bud Light “was always on a downward trend” is pure horseshit. Here is a telling quote from one such “expert”
Recent research from Northwestern University suggests that the impacts of product boycotts and "buycotts" (where consumers are encouraged to purchase a product being boycotted by others) can be short-lived, often lasting just weeks. But Neil Reid, a professor at the University of Toledo who studies the beer industry, told Reuters that the Bud Light boycott is lingering longer than expected. "This boycott has now become something much more permanent than anyone anticipated," he said.
What beer are you drinking now? Were you a Bud Light drinker and now stopped? Let us know . . .
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Speaking of horseshit
In one paragraph, the expert steps right into the shit. The first sentence parrots the company line that boycotts “…can be short-lived…”. Ok sounds kinda experty, but ok. Everyone said that. But not true. Most of us non-experts knew that. Weird.
Then Mr. Beer Expert goes dumb with the last line "This boycott has now become something much more permanent than anyone anticipated,". Yeah, no shit. Because this isn’t a boycott. It’s a lifestyle change.
More than that. It’s a Sea Change. I keep writing about this. In fact, this topic at-large was and is the impetus for this entire project. This is freedom in action. This is the New-Now-Normal. The experts suck and seem to be wrong. Time after time, the experts pontificate about how the peasantry should feel, should act, should consume, should be grateful. And collectively, we are saying Fuck You. they are starting to hear.
I call BULLSHIT. We didn’t survive the lockdowns to now be fed this constant supply of shit-sandwiches. If Bud Light would have tapped The Bad Orange to pitch Bud Light, I’d still feel like this. Do you know why?
Because Dylan Mulvaney and Donald Trump have at least one thing in common: neither have EVER drank a Bud Light. Period. If AB would have gotten a couple of hot trannies from Tranny-Tube and put them together with a case of Bud Light, I bet that would’ve been better received than what we got.
We want authenticity. We crave it. Millions of Bud Light drinkers and the “experts” in marketing could not find one that didn’t piss those millions off? That absurd sense of patronizing that was once tolerable is now toxic.
It’s not you Dylan. No, it’s not. As sad and pathetic as your life may be, don’t swallow the sword for this one baby. You might be a fun gurl to party with, but I am 100% absolutely positive that you have never-ever drank a Bud Light. Not even when you were a dude.
So why would AB pick that person to sell me Bud Light? I already was buying it. So was everyone else. So what consumer demo was this ad pursuing? Bud Light drinkers in the Trans community? Uh, here’s a secret. There’s none. Like zero.
Here is a $400M rule of customer service: When customers are happy with your product, don’t piss them off. Don’t take them for granted. And don’t tell them how or what to think. Especially about beer. Just make beer.
Most new beer drinkers aren’t new at all. Most drinkers I know started well before they turned 21, and most drink the beer their dad did, at least to start. So was the marketing plan to go after these new drinkers? Seems to me that you already have in your pocket anyone with a Bud Light-drinking-dad
Best Beer for Beginners: The First-timers Guide To Enjoying Beer
Alternatively, if the target was new drinkers without a beer-drinking-dad role-model, one could just find a checklist that already tees up the product in question. This from a post in a beer rag from 2022. I mean Corona first? OK, you’re new to beer. Go ahead.
Authenticity is Freedom.
That wasn’t the point. And they weren't the target. This ad wasn’t made to attract new drinkers. It was made to put Bud Light drinkers on blast and tell them how to think. And to scold and shame them. How’s that working out Alissa?
“And we had this hangover. I mean, Bud Light had been a brand of fratty kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach,”
At the core, that is it. One segment of society not just considers or opines what kind of humor should appeal to “us”, the consumer buying the product, it actively dictates how we should laugh, and at what. And insults us in the process.
But navigating this change is easier pontificated than practiced. I switched to drinking Longboard Lager as a result, and then I discovered a dark little secret.
WTF!! Those bastards. It’s so hard to rage against the man when we are the man! So be it. I like the beer, it’s cheap enough to drink, and it’s ostensibly from the Islands. But for ownership, it’ll have to be a compromise. I’m ok with that.
What won’t you compromise about? Is there a product or service that you won’t give up? No matter what the company said or did?
I’m still not ok with AB being foreign-owned, but I’ve come to terms with it. Now I’m actively denying support to one brand while actively supporting another brand in the portfolio of parts of the same ownership group.
So that’s how this works now. We can punish one brand hard enough to notice. AB laid off 300 marketing department staff, which probably brought cheers from the front lines. Even CNN is stating the costs. That’s going to leave a mark.
But we can support the brand we like. We sure are good at compartmentalizing, aren’t we? That’s how I grew up at least. Forgo grand statements of general intent and just focus on the small things at ground level.
Let’s just keep plugging away at what we do and reward ourselves with a cold beer. Any beer we choose. I just don’t see Bud Light among those choices anymore.
Ric
Check out this playlist when you’re on the lake. Or when you want to be on the lake.
