One manâs empty beer keg is another manâs unfilled treasure ⌠or something to that effect.
If youâre even nominally invested in Americaâs beer consumption Culture, youâve likely heard that Anheuser-Busch drove away swathes of loyal customers and cost itself billions of dollars in market value by working with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
To put it bluntly: The move has gone disastrously for the brand and the executive who reportedly pushed for the campaign.
But all that loss also represents an incredible opportunity for another brand to fill the vacuum left behind by Bud Lightâs dwindling support.
Enter: D.G. Yuengling and Son, the wholly American-owned, Pennsylvania-based brewer.
Yuengling â which is also the oldest brewery in America â has seen a resurgence in the cultural zeitgeist, due in no small part to millions of beer drinkers looking elsewhere to get their fill.
This April 14 tweet, which simply stated that âwe make good beer,â came out after much of the Anheuser-Busch brouhaha had taken place. Itâs easily the most liked tweet the company has ever put out, currently sitting at over 62,000 likes:
In fact, Bud Lightâs blunders have been such an effective advertisement for Yuengling that people are discovering a year-old marketing campaign and appreciating it anew.
In a separate bit of Social media virality, the South Carolina-based âFairfield County Republican Partyâ Facebook page recently put out a post that has quickly garnered over 25,000 likes and 2,000 shares â and itâs again thanks to Yuenglingâs resurgence.
That post simply stated âWELL PLAYEDâ and included a screen shot of this tweet:
That tweet told Yuengling, âWell played,â while telling Bud Light to âtake that,â and included an image of a case of Yuengling with three patriotic words on it: âLetâs Go USA.â
According to Yuengling, those cases first were announced in 2022 as part of its âStars & Stripesâ program, which is designed to honor and support Americaâs veterans.
Despite being a year-old campaign, the special commemorative cases (the cans are also âemblazoned with a unique desert camouflage printâ) carried such a simple, pro-America message that they still resonated strongly in 2023.
While the original tweeter responded to a doubter by stating that he bought the case âthis week,â the veracity of the tweetâs claims are almost irrelevant. Itâs besides the point.
The point is that even a year-old marketing campaign has proven to be wildly more effective than the gender ideology-driven campaign that Bud Light peddled recently.
And the secret sauce to that formula isnât even that secret: Most beer drinkers are patriotic, everyday Americans who donât want to be lectured to that up is down and men are women.
Itâs really not that complicated.
Anheuser-Busch and Yuengling are both learning that in real-time.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
