Happy Friday beer fans! Come in and have a cold one with us!
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This is completely inappropriate for the beer blog but screw it, I like the song. (“California sober” is generally accepted to mean consuming cannabis but not alcohol or other drugs.)
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I think it’s time for FNBB to follow up the Bud Light / Dylan Mulvaney story, which I first covered in April. For a good summary as of May 1, try Everything You Need to Know About the Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney Fiasco.
Aldous Pennyfarthing decided to write about this a few hours ago, and covered much of the material I had intended to, in depth and in his inimitable style. I will mention some of those stories anyway, but I won’t try to match his eloquent description of how bad Bud Light tastes.
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AB-Inbev has removed two executives responsible for the Mulvaney sponsorship (they are officially “on leave”). They seem to have ghosted Mulvaney. She hasn’t said much either.
“It was so loud that I didn’t feel part of the conversation, so I decided to take the back seat and just let them tucker themselves out,” Mulvaney said, by way of explaining her silence.
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I don’t understand social media marketing, but one thing no story has mentioned is how much, if anything, AB paid Mulvaney. They sent her product which she put into a “sponsored video” on Instagram. Are they continuing to pay for that sponsorship? They seem to have bought millions in bad publicity with maybe thousands of actual cash.
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How much has the bad publicity cost AB-Inbev? The numbers will eventually be added up, but it’s hard to say now. Per a recent Guardian story (via yahoo)
reportedly caused a big 21% drop in sales across US retail stores during a week in mid-April, per an analysis of Nielsen figures cited in the Wall Street Journal.
That 20%+ decline seems to have persisted a couple more weeks since that report (these are sales compared to one year ago). Will those former Bud Light drinkers keep buying Coors Light or Keystone or White Claw or whatever they switched to, or will they go back to the familiar blue cans? If they don’t, who benefits? And will the sales drop make an impact on AB-Inbev stock long term?
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One politically-motivated clown trying to benefit is offering “Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right Beer”. When I wrote in April a contract brewer had refused to work on this, but he now has a brewer. The website is taking orders, to be delivered in 30 days, and he’s also finally checked on the law about shipping beer and has a list of states he can’t ship to. This might really be a business not a scam, but it’s still overpriced and silly.
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Someone with a better sense of humor is proudly woke: Necromancer Brewing (Pittsburgh PA) is offering Even Gayer Light Beer, “Brewed with only the gayest ingredients”, which reportedly sold out in an hour.
Did you notice what’s really weird about Necromancer? Their url, with the rarely seen .beer domain.
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In my search for something stinky in the fridge, I discovered beer I’d forgotten about, so I’m starting with Fort Point Kolsch.
What are you drinking? Is anyone brewing?