A little less than a year after Bud Light sunk itself with a Dylan Mulvaney ad partnership that set off conservatives, Bud Light has reversed course and tacked in the exact opposite direction. It did so by partnering with non-woke comedian Shane Gillis, who was booted from SNL and rose to fame over making “offensive” jokes.
As background, Gillis is a friend of Dave Chappelle’s whom Chappelle calls the guy who is “so funny he got canceled at the beginning of his career.” During a skit Chapelle brought Gillis on stage for, Gillis joked about assassinating Biden with a “punch,” saying, “I think Biden is the first president. You could punch assassinate. You just, you just walk right up to him.”
NBC, for its part, fired Gillis from SNL in 2019 after jokes he made about Asians resurfaced. Commenting on his firing in a statement, the network said, “We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard.”
In any case, Bud Light has now partnered with Gillis. It announced the new partnership in a post on its Instagram page on Wednesday, January 31. In that post, which showed Gillis filling up a glass with Bud Light, the company captioned the picture by saying, “Welcome to the team @shanemgillis, excited to be a part of your 2024 tour.”
Commenters on the post were generally excited about the partnership. Comments included things like, “Greatest marketing comeback of all time,” “The boys are rejoicing, for the True Blessed Dawg and rightful heir has taken his seat on the throne,” “Only man who could save Bud Light,” and “Please tell me this mean we get Shane Gillis Bud Light commercials…. they will be they best ones they have ever made guaranteed.”
Gillis announced the partnership in an Instagram post as well. In the post, he said, “Excited to announce partnership with Bud Light #budlightpartner.” Comments on that post were generally positive as well. People said things like, “In their darkest hour, they turned to the one man that could save them,” “The perfect counter move by bud light,” and “This is the best that Budlight could’ve done and I hope you blow their money on something fucking ridiculous, god bless.”
Bud Light has partnered with Dana White’s UFC as well. White, justifying accepting their sponsorship, said, “They employ 65,000 Americans. They have thousands of vets that work for them. They spend $700 million a year with U.S. farmers using their crops to make their products and many, many other great things that Anheuser-Busch has done in this country.”
He did admit that money played a role as well, however, saying, “When you do sponsorships, you definitely do sponsorships for the money, too. Money is definitely a part of it, but money was not the decision-making [factor].” He added, “There’s more to being aligned with a sponsor, a major sponsor like that, for as long as I’m going to be… There are many other things that are important to me other than just the money. And the people that were all involved in this negotiation, on every side, absolutely, positively know that my choice was not determined by money.”
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