Monday, July 3, 2017

Bud, anyone?






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.