I was talking to Bruce my advertising friend about the new Budweiser commercial that was aimed for the 4th of July. It is where Adam Driver, ( oddly enough) drives across country to a disabled veteran’s home to tell the family that the daughter has a scholarship provided by Budweiser. Bruce and I could not agree on efficacy of the ad. It worked for me and he thought it approached The Bachelor in its degree of hokum.
Surprised by our different views, I began to go deeper into what actually is the Budweiser market. What do men and women want who drink Bud? After all targeting your group makes an ad, if not good, is at least successful.
I
came across what I thought was an astonishing study and survey done on Bud advertisers.
What female Bud drinkers want is a man who is, and I quote from the study “authentic.” Ok, I get that. It makes sense you
want someone genuine who is not a sleaze artist or some bogus goofball. Just be
real; be honest; don’t have a false persona. I could see going for that kind of
man in an ad or even in real life. It tells you the Bud woman wants what I want
in a man. I mean at least it is not way off the mark.
Of course “Authentic” can be misleading for you can be an authentic
psychopath—but let's not delve into semantic hair splitting.
Now
what kind of girl does a Bud man want? Please sit down before you read this. If
you take heart medicine and you are a woman, please pop a pill under your
tongue. You will think you are in a really warped time machine. Ready? The
woman they want is, and I quote again, “Low-maintenance!”
That’s right. They could have picked intelligent, genuine, funny, ambitious,
kind, family oriented. Nope. They want “Low-maintenance.”
What
exactly does low-maintenance look like in a woman in a relationship with a man?
She wants whatever the man wants. (That is referred to by the Bud man as ‘No
drama.”) She doesn’t need restaurants or dating. She will just stay home, have
a beer, ( Yup, a Bud) and two minute sex
which she says was perfect and then say goodnight. If you don’t call her on
time or cancel to watch football with your bros she is fine with it. She has no
demands, which is what the Bud man wants.
Why doesn’t she have any demands? What does it
take to be “low-maintenance.” There is
no one home and she has no boundaries and denies her personal needs. That ends
when one day she just gets depressed ( as the Rolling Stones say there is a
little yellow pill for mothers--I suspect low maintenance mothers) or silently walks out, or the man walks out
because he is bored stiff or not stiff. “Low
maintenance” is a way of saying I want a woman with no needs. The only important needs are my own. Also you never work on a
relationship or have romantic highs with out sorting out personal needs of
everyone in the relationship. Low-maintenance women are the ones that are still
on the Titanic.
The results of this study done by Bud reflect any decade since the 30’s. It does
not reflect any social change. I think that male Bud drinkers are living in a
time warp and mistake fear and powerlessness in women as a time when “America
was great.” Bud drinkers carry on, but I’ll take a foreign beer anytime.
