Outkick’s Clay Travis decided to conduct a “free beer test” at a concert in Nashville to see what people’s opinion of Bud Light is when they could get it for free.
To do so, he left a cooler full of free beer out. People could walk by and grab a beer. Michelob, Yuengling, and Bud Light were all available at the beginning of the experiment and, at the end, the cooler was out of Michelob and Yuengling and full of Bud Light. Even when it was free, people eschewed the woke beer.
Watch that here:
Weekend experiment. Beers in cooler at Nashville area event. Pick which beer you want. No one would take the Bud Light all night long. Big issue going forward for Bud Light is many don’t even want to be seen with product. They just pick another brand. pic.twitter.com/UleRAjdLTc
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 8, 2023
Discussing the experiment on Twitter, Travis said: “Weekend experiment. Beers in cooler at Nashville area event. Pick which beer you want. No one would take the Bud Light all night long. Big issue going forward for Bud Light is many don’t even want to be seen with product. They just pick another brand.”
Continuing, he then added, “Overall consumption of Bud Light is now down 26%. That’s an unmitigated disaster for the brand. And many are now avoiding the beer to avoid being mocked for drinking the beer. There’s no quick fix here, brand is slaughtered in red state beer drinking communities. Bet there is hardly any at SEC tailgates this fall.”
Louder with Crowder, commenting on why the experiment is important and what it ostensibly shows, said:
It is not just that people aren’t buying the beer. You vote with your dollars. People voting with their dollars by spending them on any other beer is bad enough for the company. But beer drinkers, at least in this experiment, didn’t even want to be seen drinking the beer FOR FREE. When have you ever heard of someone turning down free beer? I’m fairly certain the only time I drank Bud Light was if I was handed a free can.
Further, one point missed by Travis in his comment on why there likely won’t be any Bud Light at SEC tailgates come fall is that Bud Light’s former VP of Marketing attacked fraternity guys, the very type if people that go to such tailgates, saying:
“I’m a businesswoman. I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light and it was, this brand is in decline. It’s been in decline for a really long time. And if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light. So I had this super clear mandate, like we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand and my what I brought to that was a belief in okay, what is what are we what does evolve and elevate mean?
“It means inclusivity it means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men and representation is it sort of the heart of evolution, you got to see people who reflect you in the work and we have a hangover. I mean, Bud Light had been kind of a brand of Friday. Kind of out of touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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