No, I am not kidding. Anheuser-Busch InBev was just awarded the “Oscar for Advertising” at an awards ceremony held in France.

How’s that for a bit of irony? The company was chosen for the award prior to the Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney controversy, although one wonders if that would have made much of a difference.

Hiring Mulvaney to shill for their beer, after all, was a “stunning and brave” move.

Brewer AB InBev is at the Cannes Lions to collect its second annual marketer-of-the-year honor, calling recent controversy around a Bud Light promotion a “wake-up call” for the industry https://t.co/dwKfmVakxE

— WSJ Business News (@WSJbusiness) June 19, 2023

The setting for this charade is perfect: Marcel Marcondes, AB InBev’s chief marketing officer, accepted the award for “Creative Marketer of the Year” in Cannes, where all the best and the brightest congregate. His acceptance was the first time ever that the award was presented to the same company two years in a row, and was to have marked the triumph of a company that was lapping everybody else in expanding the power of its brands.

Uh, yeah…well…there was a turd in the punchbowl this evening. Dylan Mulvaney, Bud Light, and the massive drop in sales that has pushed Bud Light out of the top spot for beer sales.

That was some creative marketing on their part. It’s not often that you can burn $27 billion in 90 seconds or so. That is some government-level incompetence.

CANNES, France — It was meant to be an inspirational seminar about how Anheuser-Busch InBev, the only company Cannes Lions has named Creative Marketer of the Year two years in a row, harnessed creativity to help drive business growth.

And it was—for the most part.

On Monday, Marcel Marcondes, AB InBev’s chief marketing officer, explained how AB InBev has shifted from a company that acquires brands to one that grows them before a full theater at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. His presentation featured clips highlighting work from Corona, Brahma and Budweiser’s sponsorship of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

“If we just do creativity for the sake of creativity, we’re in the wrong business,” said Marcondes while on stage at the Palais.

In a normal world where you would expect advertisers to use their creativity to sell products, that last line should have meant “We do it to increase our business’ success.”

But in today’s woke world, it means “We do it to shove our ideology down people’s throats.”

How’d that work out for you?

Marcondes did acknowledge that the Mulvaney fiasco was a bit of a bump in the road–I suspect stockholders might think it more than that–but he was confident that a lesson had been learned.

Unwilling to avoid the controversy surrounding its Bud Light brand, however, Marcondes dedicated some time near the beginning of his keynote to address the situation.

“It’s tough to see all the controversial and divisive debates happening in the U.S. the last couple of weeks involving lots of brands and companies, including, especially, Bud Light,” he said.

Marcondes stressed brands in this predicament should remain open to learning and do a better job of what they claim to do on a daily basis: understand their customers.

“When things get divisive and controversial so easily, I think it’s an important wake-up call to all of us marketers to be very humble,” he added.

Indeed. Wise words, those.

You would almost think that would be part of the job description for a Chief Marketing Officer. Who knew it wasn’t?

Not everybody in Cannes was impressed by InBev’s acceptance of the award, which after all is about recognizing marketing genius. One might have taken notice of the hiccup or two along the way that has changed the positive perceptions consumers have of the company.

Some marketers on the ground on Monday said Bud Light’s difficulties in the U.S. should not negate the achievements of the company’s creative success across the world.

Other delegates said they were skeptical about the company’s acceptance of the creative marketer title in light of the Bud Light fiasco.

One social-media post can now travel faster and further than an advertising campaign, said Leila Fataar, founder of cultural and marketing strategy firm Platform13. “In the spirit of fairness and credibility, I think it would be a big and the right gesture for AB InBev to give the 2023 award back, make the changes necessary and come back even stronger.”

A few commentators have been playing off Marcondes’ admission that the Bud Light fiasco is a “wake-up call” as an apology. But not as I see it. Apologies generally begin with “I was wrong.”

Here, he was just admitting that InBev was hurt. Not the same thing at all.