Cancel vs Boycotts

[Carborendum]

I have heard just one too many times from CNN about the "conservative hypocrisy" for railing against cancel culture, and now we're canceling Bud Light.

Let me define the difference.

Similarities:

• Triggered by some socio-political event that rubs people of differing ideologies the wrong way.
• Public shaming is a primary tool.
• Tries to hurt the target in their pocket book.

 

Differences are more important.

Cancel Culture:

• Depends on violence to destroy the target.
• Depends on defamation, not just shaming alone.  The difference being that they have to make up stuff to make the accusations dig deeper.
• Political power is often used to destroy the target.
• Lawsuits based on "hurt feelings" are often used to destroy the target.
• Often executed/encouraged/driven by people who would not reasonably be considered an "interested party".
• Often effective more out of fear for the target's life rather than livelihood.
• Almost always effective as long as just a few people keep up the violent rhetoric.
• No sacrifice on the part of the cancelers is required.  Instead, they require the sacrifice of the target.

Boycotts:

• As close to a purely commercial (mass) transaction as can be.
• Only people who have previously supported a business have power to affect the business.
• People's livelihood is threatened, rather than people's lives.
• Usually grass roots.  Any political involvement is incidental and doesn't threaten by use of governmental force.
• Is ONLY effective when sufficient customers believe in something enough that they are willing to change their own spending habits.  (Self-sacrifice).

Most of the time boycotts are absolutely useless.  The very few times it has actually been effective required two things:

1. The people who object to the behavior make up an enormous percentage of the customer base.
2. Said customers are willing to self-sacrifice (whether paying more for a substitute, or doing without, or something else) to make their voices heard.

Is this not the law of the Lord?  Things will only change if large percentages of the population are willing to make sacrifices.  

When the left tried to cancel Chick-fil-a for supporting traditional marriage, conservatives gathered together to support the restaurant.  It jumped up to become the #1 Fast food chain in the country.  Why?  It was good chicken with some good seasonings.  But #1?, really?  Well, that's what the public thinks.

I heard one exchange on a random news report on site.  A little girl was complaining about having to stand in such a long line.  The mom said, "Freedom isn't free.  We have to make sacrifices to preserve our freedom of speech."

The Lord will give us back the power to direct society if we are willing to make sacrifices together as a society.  We don't even need to be a majority.  We need to be enough to be strong and willing to wake up the duped (for lack of a better word) to see the light.  As the righteous begin to wake up, and the wicked begin to feel the pricking of the Holy Ghost, we can have the world back the way it was before this craziness.  But it will take societal sacrifice.  People aren't waking up to the Lord.  They're just tired of the craziness.  That's not the same thing.  That's just the sorrow of the damned. 

It is only when we turn to the Lord that society changes.

The Lord would not destroy S&G for 10 righteous people.  But when there weren't even 10, he told them to get out so the rest could be destroyed.

I don't know how sincere this Bud Light boycott is.  I don't know what percentage of the population actually drinks it.  But if people have just woken up to believe "I never liked their beer anyway,"  then their boycott will fail.  "I never liked it anyway" is not a sacrifice.  And that's not the way the Lord works.  I believe that this boycott will fail because of this important factor.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Carborendum

[NeuroTypical]

I grew up surrounded by my dad's beer drinking folk.  I don't even know if there's any sort of organized boycott, just a bunch of mad people.  Just dudes who don't want to be seen buying, holding, or drinking a beer with a bunch of woke nonsense on the can.  

And I know what an organized beer boycott looks like.  Back in the late '70's, Budweiser (they used the full name back then before people got soft) was in big trouble.  Apparently there was some union busting going on, and that didn't set well with my dad and his union buddies.  I remember posters hung of a man whizzing into a stream, saying "It's all downhill from Colorado" with the Budweiser logo.   I remember social shaming happening when someone found out someone else was seen holding a Budweiser at a bar.  There was open talk of kicking them out of the union and forcing them to go find another job somewhere else.  I remember the color of my dad's beer cans changing, as he moved to Olympia.  Even though it would make him swear, because the beer's logo featured a horseshoe that was upside down.  (In case you didn't know, "You always have the horseshoe right side up, like a bucket, so the luck doesn't pour out.")

 

[Carborendum]

23 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I grew up surrounded by my dad's beer drinking folk.  I don't even know if there's any sort of organized boycott, just a bunch of mad people.  Just dudes who don't want to be seen buying, holding, or drinking a beer with a bunch of woke nonsense on the can.  

And I know what an organized beer boycott looks like.  Back in the late '70's, Budweiser (they used the full name back then before people got soft) was in big trouble.  Apparently there was some union busting going on, and that didn't set well with my dad and his union buddies.  I remember posters hung of a man whizzing into a stream, saying "It's all downhill from Colorado" with the Budweiser logo.   I remember social shaming happening when someone found out someone else was seen holding a Budweiser at a bar.  There was open talk of kicking them out of the union and forcing them to go find another job somewhere else.  I remember the color of my dad's beer cans changing, as he moved to Olympia.  Even though it would make him swear, because the beer's logo featured a horseshoe that was upside down.  (In case you didn't know, "You always have the horseshoe right side up, like a bucket, so the luck doesn't pour out.")

So, how does that stack up against the bullet points I posted earlier?

[mikbone]

1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

(In case you didn't know, "You always have the horseshoe right side up, like a bucket, so the luck doesn't pour out.")

Well that explains alot.  🙏 

[Guest Godless]

FWIW, I still know a lot of people in the beer industry, and there have definitely been threats of violence made against Anhueser Busch employees and their distributors, to say nothing of the dehumanizing hate and vitriol that the trans community has been subjected to because of this ordeal. 

[NeuroTypical]

8 hours ago, Godless said:

FWIW, I still know a lot of people in the beer industry, and there have definitely been threats of violence made against Anhueser Busch employees and their distributors, to say nothing of the dehumanizing hate and vitriol that the trans community has been subjected to because of this ordeal. 

Yep, there's plenty of that going around.  Threats of violence, dehumanizing hate, and vitriol travel freely in both directions.  If you only see it coming from right wingers or religious folks, there's a reason for that, and that reason isn't "because it's a right wing/religious issue". 

But yeah, again, I'm not sure if there's any sort of organized boycott going on.  Closest I could find with a little googling was Travis Tritt won't be having it sold at any of his concerts.  

Edited May 2, 2023 by NeuroTypical

[Carborendum]

10 hours ago, Godless said:

FWIW, I still know a lot of people in the beer industry, and there have definitely been threats of violence made against Anhueser Busch employees and their distributors, to say nothing of the dehumanizing hate and vitriol that the trans community has been subjected to because of this ordeal. 

And that is certainly wrong when ANYone does it.

My point is that there is a difference between boycotts and cancelling.  If you engage in cancelling (whether from or against the right or left) it is wrong.  If you boycott, well, best of luck to you.

[Backroads]

I'll be the first to admit boycotts are often less useful than we would like them to be, but canceling rubs me the wrong way. It's like there is no allowed way back from being cancelled. No one involved in cancelling seems to want apologies, change, explanations, etc. 

[LDSGator]

9 minutes ago, Backroads said:

It's like there is no allowed way back from being cancelled. No one involved in cancelling seems to want apologies, change, explanations, etc. 

That troubles me too, but isn’t it human nature? I’ve seen people drop friendships and never speak to one another again over political disagreements and other really shallow reasons. So it shouldn’t surprise any of us that society on a much larger scale does this too. 

[Backroads]

6 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

That troubles me too, but isn’t it human nature? I’ve seen people drop friendships and never speak to one another again over political disagreements and other really shallow reasons. So it shouldn’t surprise any of us that society on a much larger scale does this too. 

True, true. We are but a microcosm. 

[Carborendum]

BTW, it seems that virtue-signalling is highly prevalent in both cancelling and boycotts.  But boycotts can do without them.  Cancelling, not so much.

I'll have everyone know that I am fully complying with the Bud Light boycott.  I vow never to drink any Bud Light for the rest of my life .

[LDSGator]

11 hours ago, Godless said:

FWIW, I still know a lot of people in the beer industry, and there have definitely been threats of violence made against Anhueser Busch employees and their distributors, to say nothing of the dehumanizing hate and vitriol that the trans community has been subjected to because of this ordeal. 

That’s awful. If it makes you feel better I’ve seen conservatives self righteously say they’ll switch to microbrews. Totally unaware that most microbrews aren’t usually run by Trump supporters. 

[Ironhold]

On 5/1/2023 at 3:22 PM, NeuroTypical said:

I grew up surrounded by my dad's beer drinking folk.  I don't even know if there's any sort of organized boycott, just a bunch of mad people.  Just dudes who don't want to be seen buying, holding, or drinking a beer with a bunch of woke nonsense on the can.  

And I know what an organized beer boycott looks like.  Back in the late '70's, Budweiser (they used the full name back then before people got soft) was in big trouble.  Apparently there was some union busting going on, and that didn't set well with my dad and his union buddies.  I remember posters hung of a man whizzing into a stream, saying "It's all downhill from Colorado" with the Budweiser logo.   I remember social shaming happening when someone found out someone else was seen holding a Budweiser at a bar.  There was open talk of kicking them out of the union and forcing them to go find another job somewhere else.  I remember the color of my dad's beer cans changing, as he moved to Olympia.  Even though it would make him swear, because the beer's logo featured a horseshoe that was upside down.  (In case you didn't know, "You always have the horseshoe right side up, like a bucket, so the luck doesn't pour out.")

 

MBA time.

Budweiser has spent *decades* and untold sums of money trying to court blue-collar workers from all over the United States, including the portions that most coastal elites dismiss as "Fly-Over Country". It's been positioned as the beer of the common person for some time. 

Cue some utterly incompetent marketing VP declaring that Bud Light is the sole province of "frat boys" and that it's her job to completely re-brand everything. 

I put that word in quotes because her little rant got leaked. This *alone* was enough to alienate and even offend much of the company's traditional customer base. 

Pride-themed cans? Guess what: Bud's traditional core audience isn't exactly too big on the LGBT movement, with the "T" part of it gathering particular controversy of late due to a number of issues and incidents. 

Going with Dylan Mulvaney? Dylan is so controversial that even many people who do identify as being transgender want nothing to do with them. There's a growing perception that Dylan is not in fact transgender and is merely claiming to be so for publicity. 

As a result, said VP destroyed the company's image with its core audience while also ensuring that many of the people they were trying to reach out to weren't interested. 

Oh, and photos have since surfaced showing the VP attending a *lot* of frat parties, suggesting that her own life experiences may have colored her perception.

[Carborendum]

9 hours ago, Ironhold said:

As a result, said VP destroyed the company's image with its core audience while also ensuring that many of the people they were trying to reach out to weren't interested. 

Here's a problem for the boycott.  Last I heard the sales have only dropped by about 15%.  That is nowhere near enough to become a successful boycott.  Is 15% of your audience "the core"?  I'm not sure what that means, then.

Yet, conservatives are all touting "sales have plummeted!"  15% sounds like a lot.  But they were saying that when they dropped only a few percent.  And I haven't heard much more of a drop recently.  They'll recover from 15%.  And all the beer drinking folks will go back to the cheapest beer there is (Bud Light) when inflation keeps hiking up.

They said their stocks were taking a hit when they were down 3% (while they were still up 2% for the past year).  I really wish this boycott could make some societal change.  But it simply won't.

One shining glimmer of hope is the way that A-B has been handling ads and public statements since then.  They keep making it worse on their own.  They don't need a boycott to destroy them.  They might do it to themselves.

And in the end, there really is no real efficacy for this boycott no matter the result.  All the other beers that people are choosing as an alternative are all owned by the same parent company anyway.

[LDSGator]

31 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

I really wish this boycott could make some societal change.  But it simply won't.

Correct. It’ll hurt sales in the short term, give conservatives a boost in morale , and the long term effects will be minimal at best.

[Vort]

The Lord begins the revelation of the Word of Wisdom by telling us that he is giving us the revelation "[i]n consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days..." It is my opinion that Anheuser Busch is a group of "conspiring men", in toto if not individually, and that their products are the very things we have been warned against. This "conservative" (better termed right-wing) so-called boycott is a blip on the radar. A-B and their products, including Bud Light, should go out of business because their poison causes death, destruction, and misery among American families and people in general, not specifically because they hired a cynical, mentally ill transsexual as their spokesperson.

[NeuroTypical]

11 hours ago, Ironhold said:

Cue some utterly incompetent marketing VP

Great post @Ironhold!   But it's not like the whole fiasco was due to just one person in marketing.  The decision to "refresh the brand" was absolutely a group effort, with plenty of discussion in the ranks.  Or possibly not that much discussion, if everyone at Bud marketing has already bought into the stuff the VP had, or was afraid to be the one person to stand up and say the emperor had no clothes.  If the former, you can expect disjointed and weird things to come out of that company as it reels in disbelief with it's sense of moral superiority intact.  If the latter, there might be some restructuring happening.

I went to a "diversity in the workplace" symposium a year ago, because I wanted to know how the other half was living.  One of the segments was about the Disney fiasco, which continues to make headlines to this day.  It wasn't well attended, I don't think many of the folks who like going to such things, wanted to hear what they had to say.  Their basic message was "company executives aren't gonna go full woke for you, because of stuff like this."

Seems like the VP also didn't attend that segment.

Edited May 3, 2023 by NeuroTypical

[Guest Godless]

 

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

And in the end, there really is no real efficacy for this boycott no matter the result.  All the other beers that people are choosing as an alternative are all owned by the same parent company anyway.

This really is the icing on the cake. ABI has an impressive aresenal of American craft brands and big name imports under their umbrella. I guarantee a lot of these Kid Rock fans are still supporting ABI without even realizing it.

[NeuroTypical]

1 hour ago, LDSGator said:

Correct. It’ll hurt sales in the short term, give conservatives a boost in morale , and the long term effects will be minimal at best.

I'd basically agree, but with the caveat that cutthroat capitalism may force some changes.  Execs and decision makers answer to boards of directors, and if someone makes a call with an immediate negative financial impact, there will be consequences.  If the board and exec boardrooms are full of social activists (which I'm not sure beer companies are), the going thoughts will be "looks like not everyone is ready for the unstoppable changes coming.  We'll tone it down a bit, and sort of sneak such things in sideways so our average drunk customer doesn't care, but the other woke folk will".   If they're not, well, you can expect the dollar to rule here. 

From today's WSJ:

Quote

In the week ended April 22, Bud Light’s U.S. retail-store sales fell 21.4% compared with the year-earlier period, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by Bump Williams Consulting. Meanwhile, sales of rival brands Coors Light and Miller Lite each grew about 21%.  
...
The trouble began when the brand enlisted several social-media influencers, including Ms. Mulvaney, to create buzz for the beer brand during the March Madness college basketball tournament. The can made for Ms. Mulvaney was never available for sale. But many people—including bar and store owners—wrongly came to believe that Ms. Mulvaney’s video had aired as a television commercial or that the can with her picture on it was stocked on store shelves, wholesalers said. 
...
“They didn’t need to take this risk,” one distributor said, adding that he was worried the brand might now swing back in the other direction. “I lost my cowboy bars and now I could lose my gay bars, too.” 
...
Anheuser-Busch released a new ad last week for the NFL draft and told wholesalers that it is accelerating production on others. The brewer told distributors that its Bud Light marketing will stay consistent with the “Easy to Drink, Easy to Enjoy” theme of this year’s Super Bowl commercials.

Anheuser-Busch has invited wholesalers to a meeting next week in St. Louis, where they expect to hear more details on the company’s summer marketing plans.

Anheuser-Busch also paid for a free case of Bud Light for every distributor employee. And last week, it sent wholesalers a letter they could share with retailers to address misperceptions about Ms. Mulvaney’s post. 

It's always nice to see the phrase "Go woke, go broke" being tested live where everyone can see the results.

And, honestly, it's nice to be a good little mormon boy who doesn't drink beer.

Edited May 3, 2023 by NeuroTypical

[NeuroTypical]

Oh - and let's not forget that Dylan Mulvaney first hit our cultural awareness, playing Elder White in the Book of Mormon Musical!

(That's fun too, but still not as fun as just plain old being a good little teetotalling mormon boy.)

[LDSGator]

50 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I'd basically agree, but with the caveat that cutthroat capitalism may force some changes.  Execs and decision makers answer to boards of directors, and if someone makes a call with an immediate negative financial impact, there will be consequences.  If the board and exec boardrooms are full of social activists (which I'm not sure beer companies are), the going thoughts will be "looks like not everyone is ready for the unstoppable changes coming.  We'll tone it down a bit, and sort of sneak such things in sideways so our average drunk customer doesn't care, but the other woke folk will".   If they're not, well, you can expect the dollar to rule here. 

From today's WSJ:

Totally get it. And AB misread their core audience here. Liberal or conservative, if you run an organization where you ask people for money, rule one is never anger those people. 

Edited May 3, 2023 by LDSGator

[Anddenex]

Yes, there is a difference between boycotting and cancel culture. I think you summed it up as good as you could.

Boycott simply means I won't purchase or be a recipient of your product. Cancel culture by force (like Satan) wants their way by any means necessary as they dehumanize their targets for different political views. Cancel culture occurs even if they don't watch or view a show. They just want it "canceled". Boycott simply says, I don't need your service anymore, thus I'm not paying.

I don't watch the NBA anymore or any other professional sports (for multiple reasons). I'm boycotting for multiple reasons -- one of the biggest reasons is now its more street ball than professional basketball.

It's a fine line between the two, much like discipline and allowing agency. There comes a time, even with our perfect Father in heaven, where harsh discipline is a result of agency, although the disciplined is screaming "it's my agency"!