Anheuser-Busch’s Messaging

A letter writer to Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section offered a solution to Anheuser-Busch’s marketing fiasco of recent weeks.

A-B should produce a series of cans and bottles featuring labels highlighting soldiers, athletes, teachers, construction workers, etc. I’d start buying again, and I am sure many others would do the same.

I’m not sure I would. A-B’s managers spoke from their heart the first time and said what their values are. This time around, they would only be putting out those subsequent cans in response to the hue and cry over the former. There’s no possibility of taking the change as sincerely done with the current managers in place.

And no, putting a couple of lead marketers on temporary leave doesn’t cut it. The CEO approved the marketing switch, too, if only by being the one in charge. And his subsequent statement, which was in the main a non sequitur, only demonstrated that he agreed with the prior marketing move.

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