{"id":31215,"date":"2023-05-31T11:25:13","date_gmt":"2023-05-31T15:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=31215"},"modified":"2023-05-31T11:25:45","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T15:25:45","slug":"the-real-reason-beer-companies-are-going-woke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2023\/05\/31\/the-real-reason-beer-companies-are-going-woke\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Reason Beer Companies Are Going Woke"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The puns were flowing like wine, or rather, beer, on social media this week when Miller Lite went viral for an ad campaign that blasted its own brand for \u201csexism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHold my beer, Budweiser! Miller Lite’s new feminist spokeswoman is here to cuss at you and explain why men are evil,\u201d <\/span>wrote<\/a><\/u> Not the Bee.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMiller Lite apparently wants the Bud Light boycott treatment too,\u201d said Rogan O\u2019Handley, a Hollywood lawyer turned conservative commentator and supporter of former President Donald Trump. \u201cNewsflash: After a hard day\u2019s work, working-class beer drinkers don\u2019t want to be lectured like they\u2019re in a gender studies class at SUNY-Oswego.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ad features Ilana Glazer, a comedian who claimed women were the first brewers in history but were betrayed by corporate America.<\/p>\n

“From Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages to colonial America, women were the ones doing the brewing,” Glazer said. “Centuries later, how did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer? They put us in bikinis.”<\/p>\n

To make amends, Miller Lite is buying up vintage ad art featuring women in swimwear, which it will turn into compost to support female brewers. \u201cThat good s*** helps farmers grow quality hops,\u201d one woman explains.<\/p>\n

Many accused Miller Lite of following the \u201cwoke\u201d path of Bud Light, which witnessed <\/span>a collapse in sales<\/a> <\/span>following a March Madness ad campaign featuring transgender influencer <\/span>Dylan Mulvaney<\/a> <\/span>that prompted Anheuser-Busch <\/span>to issue an apology<\/a> <\/span><\/u>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,\u201d wrote CEO Brendan Whitworth.<\/p>\n

What many on social media failed to realize is that Miller Lite\u2019s ad was released before Bud Light\u2019s implosion. It had just received little attention. It\u2019s not clear if Miller Lite\u2019s ad will have the same effect on beer sales as Bud Light\u2019s. Some commentators on Twitter said they appreciated the ad.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually think that Miller Lite got it a lot more right than Bud Lite in how it approached a female demo,\u201d <\/span>wrote<\/a> <\/span><\/u>Emily Zanotti of Fox News.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

That\u2019s the nature of commercials, of course. They are subjective. What might make one person feel uncomfortable might appeal to someone else.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m apparently a Neanderthal who likes the old-school Miller Lite commercials, whether they feature women in bikinis or <\/span>Bob Uecker masquerading<\/a> <\/span><\/u>as Rodney Dangerfield at a costume party. I don\u2019t like feeling lectured. That\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n

People naturally have different preferences and tastes in commercials, and that\u2019s OK. The thing is, I\u2019m actually Miller Lite\u2019s target demo: a 40-something male beer drinker.<\/p>\n

This invites questions. Why are Bud Light and Miller Lite making commercials that alienate their own consumer base? More importantly, why are they wading into controversial matters such as transgenderism, <\/span>third-wave<\/a> <\/span>feminism, and <\/span>nonbinary gender<\/a> <\/span><\/u>at all?<\/p>\n

The primary answer is the rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance, a term coined during a 2004 United Nations initiative (\u201c <\/span>Who Cares Wins<\/a> <\/span><\/u>\u201d) that grades companies on social performance.<\/p>\n

ESG was born from the idea that traditional capitalism needs to be replaced with a more caring, socially conscious capitalism that serves other \u201cstakeholders.\u201d And what started as \u201cguidelines and recommendations\u201d <\/span>have become explicit standards<\/a> <\/span><\/u>set by ESG rating agencies that impose steep costs on publicly traded companies, especially those that don\u2019t comply.<\/p>\n

The thing is, companies are not jazzed about having to dance to the tune of a small cabal of central bankers and asset managers. A 2022 CNBC survey <\/span>showed<\/a> <\/span>that while executives support ESG publicly, privately, they harbor serious concerns. Yet not playing ball is not an option.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a company has to do disclosures, and it has some executives who are \u2018not into ESG,\u2019 it should be thinking about the cost of not becoming more concerned,\u201d Eileen Murray, a former executive of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, <\/span>told CNBC<\/a> <\/span><\/u>.<\/p>\n

Miller Lite and Bud Light drinkers have every right to be annoyed by ads they don\u2019t like. But they should understand these publicly traded companies are playing a balancing act on who they risk alienating, their consumers or ESG puppeteers.<\/span><\/p>\n

This article was republished with permission from the <\/em>Washington Examiner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nJon Miltimore
\n<\/a><\/h5>\n

\n

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. (Follow him on Substack<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

His writing\/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The puns were flowing like wine, or rather, beer, on social media this week when Miller Lite went viral for an ad campaign that blasted its own brand for \u201csexism.\u201d \u201cHold my beer, Budweiser! Miller Lite’s new feminist spokeswoman is here to cuss at you and explain why men are evil,\u201d wrote Not the Bee. \u201cMiller Lite apparently wants the Bud Light boycott treatment too,\u201d said Rogan O\u2019Handley, a Hollywood lawyer turned conservative commentator and supporter of former President Donald Trump. \u201cNewsflash: After a hard day\u2019s work, working-class beer drinkers don\u2019t want to be lectured like they\u2019re in a gender studies class at SUNY-Oswego.\u201d The ad features Ilana Glazer, a comedian who claimed women were the first brewers in history but were betrayed by corporate America. “From Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages to colonial America, women were the ones doing the brewing,” Glazer said. “Centuries later, how did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer? They put us in bikinis.” To make amends, Miller Lite is buying up vintage ad art featuring women in swimwear, which it will turn into compost to support female brewers. \u201cThat good s*** helps farmers grow quality hops,\u201d one woman explains. Many accused Miller […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[281,3949,3317,2253,1536],"class_list":["post-31215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-politics","tag-beer","tag-esg","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-sexism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31215"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31219,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31215\/revisions\/31219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}