Lite, Shmite, Ultra-Shite – You All Suck

In the wake of Bud Light performing the impossible task of stepping on its own transgender wokedick comes this silliness:

Miller Lite is facing criticism for a weeks-old ad that pushed a feminist message.

“So here’s to women,” comedian Ilana Glazer says in the ad, which Miller Lite published in March for Women’s History Month. “Because without us there would be no beer.”

Without women, there pretty much wouldn’t be any need for beer, but let’s continue:

Glazer explains that women have made beer throughout history and the beer industry has not paid them enough credit. The ad criticizes beer advertisements that feature women in bikinis.

Errr nobody gives a rat’s ass about who actually makes beer — it could be made by Brazilian macaque monkeys, for that matter, and I suspect some actually might be — but showing women in bikinis is just the beer industry’s equivalent of a cosmetic company using some actress as their “face”, i.e. getting the attention of its core buyers.

But that just leads to my main point.

Regardless of who makes it and who drinks it, “light” or “lite” (i.e. diluted) beer is a totally shit product. 

We shouldn’t be boycotting Bud Light or Miller Lite or any of their cohort brands;  we should be boycotting diluted beer in toto.

When I say “we” I mean all existing male drinkers of this foul swill — I had one sip of Miller Lite back in 1985, and have never touched the shit (of any brand) since, so I can’t very well boycott something I never drink.

Still, I can’t deny that there’s a need for people to drink lots of hardly-alcoholic booze, so I have to reluctantly concede that there is a market for it.  Going back to my first experiences with light beer, I recall that anyone throwing a party always had to get some Lite in so that the girls could drink with the boys.

So while men have always bought light beer, it’s generally been for their womenfolk and not themselves:  men can consume and handle alcohol in quantity more easily than women — fact! — so why not?  Light beer, then, has always been aimed at women, but subtly:  showing bikini-clad women in those ads simply reminds the buyers — mostly men — not to forget the ladies when they plan their party.

Clearly, though, that’s just Not Appropriate anymore, and Men Are Pigs and Women Are Downtrodden and and and and, ad nauseam.

Is it time for a breakfast martini yet?  Oh, why the fuck not?  If there was any 6X anywhere around, I’d go for one of those, but there isn’t so I’ll just substitute.

Not a lite bone in its considerable body.


Judging from the Comments, I seem to have pissed in a few people’s light beer.  LOL

They Hate All Of Us Anyway

Here’s one that made me chuckle:

Gunmaker Heckler & Koch tweeted agreement Tuesday with Miller Lite’s woke campaign against using sexy women — “bunnies” — to sell products, then doubled down in a second tweet, describing ad campaigns that objectify women as “trash marketing.”

On Tuesday, Heckler & Koch doubled down, responding to accusations that they have become “woke” by giving a detailed explanation of their opposition of “objectifying women” in selling guns:

Wow- woke? Allow me to translate: objectifying women was never a good marketing strategy. In the firearms industry, that was a prominent strategy up until recently. Many industries have done that (including beer corps).

As an actual woman typing this, I’ll use more words for you to comprehend: using bunnies to sell products is trash marketing. Supporting women by not doing that is good. 

Of course, it’s easy to say all that bullshit when your target market isn’t men buying guns for their womenfolk (unlike light beer).  If it was, H&K (who, as Larry Correia reminds us, think we all suck anyway) would paint bikini models on the oversized grips of their overpriced guns.

And by the way — and this applies to all gun companies — your job is not to “support women” by uttering platitudes like the above.  Your job is to support women by making guns that they can actually shoot.  (Last time I looked, H&K is kinda lean in that product description.)

As with light beer, I can’t boycott H&K products because I’ve never owned one in the first place — mostly because of H&K’s Ferrari-like premium prices.  (Only unlike Ferrari, whose cars are arguably worth the $$$$, H&K guns aren’t.)

Anyway, it’s all bullshit. Manufacturers have been using beautiful women to sell their products ever since Mrs. Aarg preferred Mrs. Thaarg’s leopardskin loincloth.  That’s not going to change, ever.

Bloody fools.

Secret Advanced Technology?

I got triggered by this (link):

A couple months back I needed a cooler trunk for a road trip — not a soft-sided freezer bag, but the kind of thing one takes on camping, hunting or fishing trips.  I haven’t had to buy one of these things in yonks, so I was completely out of touch with the whole thing, but I thought I’d just get a Coleman because I sort of know the brand and I’ve had good experiences with it in the past.  Also, I needed something in the 50-60-quart size.

So off I went to Academy because they’re located next door to my next stop, the Kroger which in turn is next door to my sooper-seekrit mailbox place.  (Efficient, that’s me.)

No Coleman.  Okay, no sweat;  here’s Igloo:


…not bad, but a little pricey, and I want a trunk, not a box.

Here’s Magellan, which is Academy’s sorta-house brand, made (as they all are) in China:


…wait, WTF?  $200 for a smaller cooler?  Any more Igloos?


FFS, two hundred and fifty dollars for a fucking cooler with wheels?  Does it come with independent suspension and power steering?

But it got worse, oh yes it did.  Try this proud Yeti number:

…ummmmm

Okay, I said I’m out of touch with this category, but has there been some massive gain in static refrigeration technology that I haven’t heard about?  “Roadie”?  Does it come with someone to drag the thing around?

Had I wandered into REI, Whole Foods or a Ferrari dealership by mistake?

What premium-priced hell is this, where people pay this kind of money for what is, after all, a throwaway product that lasts a couple of years before the seals rot and you have to get another one?

Somebody ‘splain this to me, please.  I’m clearly just ignorant.


By the way:  I ended up getting two styrofoam coolers from 7-Eleven for $15 apiece, just put up with the styro-squeaking for the trip, then tossed them when I got home.  Job done.

Contempt

One of my favorite cartoon strips of all time was the late (and much-missed) Johnny Hart’s B.C. series.  The single cartoon which tickled me most when I first read it, maybe forty years ago, was this exchange:

“Oh Great Guru, what is the definition of contempt?”
“Winning the Husband Of The Year Award, and sending your mistress to give your acceptance speech.”

I have a new definition of contempt, and there’s nothing funny about it.  Try this one:

A key lawmaker reacted in disbelief Tuesday when a Biden cabinet official said the climate change agenda took priority over the livelihoods of blue collar workers because “there’s a lot of jobs.”

You have to read the entire exchange to get the full flavor of the contempt that senior government employees people (like this watermelon Deb Haaland) have for the working class.

And we know that they despise the working class even more because they support someone like Donald Trump, who actually does care about blue-collar jobs.  So the Greens get a double win:  ecology “protection” and punishing Trump voters.

How nice for them.

Unaffected, Yet Still Amused

As someone who has never drunk more than a mouthful of “light” beer (true story:  I tasted a Lite when I first arrived here, didn’t finish the drink, and never touched another of the type ever again), the brouhaha surrounding Bud Light’s marketing decision to elevate some girlyboy to be the brand spokesman has left me totally unmoved — well, apart from bursting out in derisive laughter, that is.

I don’t have a sexy MBA from some elite academic institution, so I’m hardly one to judge this latest example of woke stupidity [redundancy alert].  Nevertheless, here are some core principles I’ve discovered along the way, in a career that spanned over three decades of marketing and advertising.

Marketing Rule #1:  You never neglect (never mind alienate) your existing customer base.  They are the ones who pay your salaries and keep your production lines moving.

Marketing Rule #2:  Once your brand is established, you never chase after “new” customers, but concentrate on getting your existing customers to use your product more.  This is both intuitive and cost-effective, except perhaps to an inexperienced person with a sexy MBA from some elite academic institution.

Marketing Rule #3:  You never make radical changes to your marketing or advertising strategy, especially when it comes into direct conflict with the philosophy of the first two rules.

Marketing Rule #4:  You never let the latest “thing” drive changes to your marketing strategy, especially if that latest “thing” conflicts directly with your brand’s core principle (Unique Selling Proposition, ethos, whatever) and customer base.

And for senior management:  if anyone in your marketing structure — executives, ad agency, promotion company, whatever — suggests anything that flies in the face of the above four principles, fire them immediately before they get to make those changes.

Understand that they’re not being fired for making a mistake.  They’re being fired for deliberately ignoring the canon of the marketplace.

Sequential Humor

I’ve spoken about these guys before, but this is the best.

Executive summary:  Company comes up with cheeky ad which is generally loved, but which (of course) offends a few (literally) people, so they have to take it down.

Here’s the offending (not offensive) ad:

Here’s their response post-takedown:

And here’s their latest:

Perfect, as advertised.  If I were in the market for some backyard fake grass, I wouldn’t consider anyone other than Great Grass.