5 Marketing Tips...From A Drag Queen
By Timothy Flemming, Jr.
I'm pretty sure you've heard by now. Heard what? How bad things have gotten for Bud Light and Anheuser Busch.
I mean, I now go to the grocery store and head straight for the beer section. And I don't even drink! I just go to observe all of the untouched cases of Bud Light sitting on the shelves.
But if you've been living under a rock for the past couple of months, let me bring you up to speed. Bud Light hired a "woke" marketing director, Alissa Heinerscheid, who then hired Dylan Mulvaney, a drag queen and social media influencer, to be the new face of the brand. And I get it. Alissa was trying to capitalize on this new trend - a ridiculous one. She was trying to "diversify" and lead Bud Light into unchartered territory.
I guess Alissa didn't learn anything from Disney who lost billions of dollars as a result of doing the same exact thing. It got so bad for them, they had to fire their own CEO. And for good reason - no parent wants to take their child to watch a nonbinary, Black trans male Snow White and the Seven gender fluid Dwarves. I'm just sayin'.
But poor Alissa - she really misunderstood her customers. And as a result thereof, Bud Light has lost "billions" of dollars in sales and has become the butt of nearly every joke.
But there's some positive out of this. For one, it's good to know everyone hasn't lost their minds. For a moment, I was getting nervous. The mainstream media was making it seem like everyone forgot the answer to the question: What is a woman? Fwwww!
And here's another positive: Bud Light, Alissa and Dylan have demonstrated to the rest of us entrepreneurs what NOT to do. Yes, as the old saying goes: "Experience is the best teacher." And Bud Light's plummeting sales have taught us these 5 valuable lessons:
1. Know your audience. If you're going to succeed in business, the first step is to identify your target audience. You must discover your ideal customer and get to know inside and out. Apparently, Bud Light lost sight of their audience. They forgot that their customer base primarily consisted of men who cherish what are considered the more traditional values in American culture: hard work, machismo...and sports. Oh, and Clydesdales.
2. Don't insult your audience's intelligence by promoting a message they deem offensive. Yes, don't assume that your audience is so brainwashed that they'll follow you anywhere. Even into Loony-ville. Bud Light basically insulted the intelligence of its audience by assuming "manly men" were too stupid to know the difference between a woman and a man in a skirt. And they paid dearly for presenting a marketing campaign and message that offended their customer base. If you think people are moronic, brainless imbeciles who don't know or care about what's going on in the world around them, you're mistaken. It's one thing to listen to what a bunch of liberal politicians, University cry-babies (I mean, students) and Hollywood think (despite the fact all three are out of touch with the real world), and an entirely different thing to listen to what ordinary, everyday people think. Listen to your people.
3. Stay humble. Another way of putting this is: Don't assume you're too big to fail. Don't think you can't have it all one day and then lose it all the next due to poor choices. We sometimes take for granted those who've been with us for a long time, assuming we have them in the palms of our hands. We forget that we're supposed to continuously strive to win them over rather than assume we "got them in the bag" and taking them for granted.
4. Don't forget the goal of business is to make money, not idealogues and disciples. Bud Light, just like Disney, Nike, Maybelline, and the other companies who're busy trying to change the culture and convince all of society that gender doesn't exist, the sky isn't blue - it's brown with turquoise clouds, and cockroaches make a healthy diet, forgot that people turn to them to escape the realities and hardships of life. They want to relax, laugh, have a good time, take a load off mentally and emotionally, and be entertained. They want to enjoy a good meal and take their kids to a safe, fun environment where they can run and play like kids. They don't want to be indoctrinated, preached to, and force-fed some radical agenda cooked up by a bunch of rich social engineers pulling strings behind the scene like the X-File's "cancer man". People want an escape. You know, the kind Disney used to give us when featuring fairy godmothers who magically transformed housemaids into stunning princesses with magical glass slippers. So get out of the way of your business. Now, it's perfectly fine (and necessary) to hold on to your principles and standards and avoid supporting and promoting things that violate your conscience. You have the right to say no to certain things, but you don't have the right to force others to say yes to certain things. However, should they ever inquire about what drives you, what makes you different, what's your "secret sauce" for success, that's when you will have the opportunity to share your faith or personal beliefs. But first you have to win them over by doing a darn good job at whatever it is that you do business-wise.
5. Lastly...don't hire Dylan or Alissa to be your VP of Marketing.
For more marketing and business tips or to download my free training, "5 Ways To Increase Your Revenue In 30 Days", click here to visit www.TimothyFlemmingJr.com.