Super Bowl LIII is over. There was a game and there were some ads. Most importantly: What did we learn?
First, we learned that I’m not the only one that hates High-Fructose Corn Syrup. So does Bud Light! And apparently they’re also banking on the idea that drinkers of their crappy beer feel the same way. I didn’t know there were more of me out there. That’s a promising sign for the future!
In case you missed it, there was an advertising coup rarely used outside of politics and those ads where the cool PC guy demolished the losery Apple guy, Bud Light hammered their competitors by revealing that they use gross GMO sugar substitute instead of regular, pure beer ingredients.
Will it work? Who knows!
They say that advertising on the Super Bowl never works. But is that a problem with the medium, or with the general boring and pointless qualities in the advertising?
This bold tactic is a good start. If you have the guts to take on your competitors directly, exposing their dirtiest secrets, you’ve got a better chance than if you’re just trying to be clever, to get a cheap laugh and hope for the best.
But does anyone really care about Bud Light? Do they have a passionate following? Or are is Bud Light one of those things that people end up getting because it’s there, it’s easy, it’s cheap, it’s benign, it’s LITE?
Hipsters like crappy stuff on purpose. Pabst Blue Ribbon, etc. It’s IRONIC!
Maybe Bud Light has fans. People get jazzed up about all kinds of strange things. Maybe there’s something about the brand that really resonates with people. Maybe people identify with it. I was once hanging out with some people that were really into ‘Bud Heavy.’ (Regular Budweiser, in case their joke is too subtle for you.) They brought cases of it around with them. It was their ‘thing.’
The Lesson Here is that Corn is Going Down!
The important thing is that the war on sugar, and the war on GMO have hit the mainstream. Corn is going down! It’s about time!
How will the bad guys fight back? Hopefully for their sake they have a Don Draper on their side who can be like: ‘Yeah we use horrible ingredients that are gross and will kill you, but WE’RE TOASTED!’ And then people will say: ‘Who cares about all this doom and gloom and death and stuff. It’s toasted. I don’t know what that means but I LIKE IT!’
This style of re-framing worked then and it will probably work now. Because ultimately no one really cares about dying or environmental catastrophe. They just want to like and get likes. They just want to keep it simple. Is that so wrong?
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