Enjoy With Pride?
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Posted on 11/12/2026 4:43:07 AM PST by MtnClimber
What we prefer as customers or citizens is not what our betters have planned for us.
We all know the adage: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Unfortunately, somewhere between the invention of PowerPoint and the proliferation of executive MBAs, this principle appears to have been replaced in executive suites by another: If it ain’t broke, you’re not innovating hard enough.
Consider three seemingly unrelated developments: Bud Light’s ill-fated collaboration with Dylan Mulvaney, Tom’s of Maine’s decision to sweeten its once-distinctive toothpaste, and the role of Maine’s political elite in a facelift that fashioned the state as diverse and inclusive. They all have the common denominator of decision-makers believing incorrectly that they knew what other people ought to want.
Act I: Bud Light Discovers Its Customers Need Improving
In 2023, Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light, faced a problem familiar to every ambitious marketing executive. Her company sold an enormously popular product with a well-established customer base. A lesser executive might have regarded this as a satisfactory state of affairs. Heinerscheid saw an opportunity for transformation. Bud Light, she suggested, needed to move beyond its traditional fraternity-oriented image and cultivate a more inclusive audience.
Enter Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender social-media personality who participated in a sponsored Instagram promotion featuring a personalized Bud Light can. The collaboration was relatively limited. Mulvaney wasn’t appointed the brand’s permanent spokesperson, and the commemorative can wasn’t intended for retail sale. But the resulting controversy was anything but limited. A consumer boycott erupted. Sales fell sharply. Heinerscheid went on leave. Bud Light discovered that one could generate enormous publicity without necessarily generating a corresponding enthusiasm for purchasing beer. The central irony was that Bud Light’s traditional customers had never requested a new cultural identity for their beer. They wanted a familiar product.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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This is what happens when you hire woke employees. But the leftists in HR want woke employees.
Implementing a plan diametrically opposite of the old Broken Windows policing. Natural inclination of criminals?
Taking it a step further back, big corporations were forced to diversify their executive boards and felt the least harm could be done in HR, which is why so many of them are big black liberal women.
It is amazing that Alissa Heinerscheid got hired after that. Idiots.
Pushing the irrational, mentally ill marketing on the good citizens in the republic. You push, you pay. There are many great beers. Budwater is not among them.
The article told the stories well, but gets a C- for the close. The author could have made a much stronger argument at the end for why all these things are bad.
Liberals crave the power to make others miserable, it’s as simple as that.
If I was a betting man, and I am, I’d bet everything that the person that came up with the idea of an HR department was a liberal.
He is talking about how much Maine regrets these decisions. Not from last week’s election results, except in the northern half which will now be represented by Paul LePage, ex-R governor. My suggestion would be to put the Somali refugees down in Kennebunkport, next to the Bush family mansion, as they had the idea to bring them in, let them enjoy their company.
Bud Light is not a great beer. However, it was the number one selling beer in the country. EVERY bar/restaurant/gin mill had/has Bud Light on tap. Every other beer changes, especially seasonally on tap. Like Sam Adams and all the different Ales.
This catastrophic marketing disaster needs to be taught in Marketing 101 at every college for the next fifty years. How to destroy a brand.
Go 20-30 miles inland and it changes into Appalachia. Especially in the FORMER MILL towns.
Portland is a smaller version of the city in Oregon with the same name. A liberal utopia turned into a hell hole. The only thing saving it is the summer tourist season and the islands in Casco Bay.
Maine is now a WELFARE state. Meaning they have brought in a permanent underclass that does not work, at least on the books and remains on welfare. Marijuana dispensaries are EVERYWHERE. The Chinese gangs supposedly own 500 grow houses scattered around rural towns and old mill towns. According to the Maine Wire.
Somalis were brought into South Portland and Lewiston. Lewiston being a former mill town. Where Mr LL Bean made boots and sold them throughout the world.
The majority of them are still on some type of government assistance. Even though some came in during the Clinton administration. Same as MN & VT. The only thing keeping the interior of Maine going is the forest/lumber industry and downhill skiing. The ski areas like VT are mostly seasonal jobs. So much so that they bring in people from around the world to work there in the winter. Just like IF you go to to Bar Harbor in the summer you we be waited on by some girl from Eastern Europe. I was at Jay Peak last December and met three young people working there from Italy. They said they could make more working in VT than in the Alps.
Bottom Line - some people still value tradition and stability. We all know that change is a constant, but sometimes change isn’t required, needed or wanted.
Yes, and thanks for your #14 post.
Bud Light was already in steep decline.
It's not "Go woke go broke". It's "Going broke, go woke in desperation, and end up further broke".
I worked in Maine for four years or so. It is an “interesting” place. People think of it as a charming New England sea faring playground. They think of the Bush compound. They think of Portland and Bar Harbor. They think of LL Bean.
And yes, those are the liberal bastions along the coast.
What they don’t think of is “The County” which is one of the poorest sections in the country. They don’t think of the remoteness around Baxter and Rangey. They don’t think of the northern woods which are massive and populated by a bunch of libertarian old Yankees. They don’t think of the poverty of Lewiston/Auburn—the old factory towns. They don’t think of Bath, where ships have been built for 200 years.
Maine is not like any of the other New England states. I found the people nice, once you broke through their odd exterior. But they tended to be clannish and I never saw people so fixated on following the rules—I have no idea how LLBean developed their regard for customer service. I couldn’t get my folks to “bend” (in a service enviornment) at all. I had to force them to “forgive” customer errors. I had never seen anything like it before.
Nothing surprises me in Maine. I was happy to get out of there.
That is why suddenly every different brand now has one. I have tried all of them. My go to is the Corona Zero. Put a lime in it and you don't know the difference. Plus it is only 60 calories.
I believe Athletic is the top selling NO Alcohol beer.
Guinness even has one.
I agree with you. Relocate them near the Bushies.
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