I think Mulvaney was just an inciting incident. People realized it’s not a good beer.
The level of Affinity I have for any beer is simply...well...low.
In fact, is there any PRODUCT to which I have an attachment, that borders on matrimony?
No.
I mean, I love my gas guzzler. But if my guzzler’s manufacturer flies the hammer and sickle over its US HQ, I will NOT feel anything close to what could be the feeling of infidelity. I will get peeved, and find a substitute, and move on.
Beer is pretty low on my totem pole of Things To Which I Have Deep Love and Attachment. In fact, so is pretty much everything I put in my grocery cart, that I drive, that I wear, that I pick up at the mall, buy online, and cheer on.
The Holy Trinity, Mrs DoodleBob and the little DoodleBobs, Church, and America....they have the power to Hurt. Because they are important.
Beer is basically undigested urine and a buzz. It didn’t give me children, make me proud, go on vacation with me, or offer salvation or life liberty and property.
I bet most people are like me in that regard. As such, the emotional divorce people are having with Bud Light just isn’t painful. That is why they’re so concerned - these ex-customers won’t come back.
A bunch of die hard Bud drinkers have discovered that there are actual beers out there and that they’ve been conned into drinking a beer-like-fluid instead.
In the early 80s...low-cal beer was a new fad, and with advertising...Bud-Lite took the front position. Limited options for maybe a decade.
Since 2000? Competition has arrived...having a better taste and identifies as low-cal. All people needed was an incentive like this....to find better tasting low-cal beer.
The logic which A-B failed as a company to grasp...there just aren’t that many people who follow the low-cal beer path. Trying to imagine that tranny-people would make some kind of difference, when probably the vast majority are under the age of 25, and more prone to cocktails (in general)....made no beer-sense.