Enjoy With Pride?
[All pictures are posted for Educational Purposes
in accordance with Fair Use]
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 ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.