Bud Light is never going to recover, but at least the parent company InBev has implicitly admitted that the geniuses behind their advertising strategy may have misread their customer base.

Full details:https://t.co/jCAV8htQ6k

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 27, 2023

It didn’t take a genius to realize that once the temporary suspensions hit a couple of months ago an eventual parting of the ways was inevitable. You can’t cost a company billions of dollars without facing at least a bit of blowback, and after a cool-down period, the people who created the crisis are well and truly gone.

The Daily Caller got the scoop yesterday, somehow getting their hands on some texts that revealed some inside information that went beyond the plain vanilla corporate doublespeak. Kudos to them! Nobody is shopping private texts to me. Share ’em if you got ’em!

The two top Anheuser-Busch marketing executives who were placed on leave amid the company shakeup no longer work for the brand, a source inside Anheuser-Busch confirmed in texts obtained by the Daily Caller on Tuesday.

Group Vice President for Marketing Daniel Blake and Bud Light Marketing Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid are “gone gone,” according to obtained text messages with a current regional head of marketing. The Caller is granting anonymity to the source to discuss legally fraught internal company policy.

“To my understanding if we publicly announced the word ‘fire’ it opens up the potential for them to sue us. Thats why we said leave of absence,” the source said in a text message obtained by the Caller.

“The wholesalers would have had an absolute HAY DAY with leadership if they didn’t remove her,” the source inside the company also said.

“To be fair- Daniel Blake was actually awesome. I think he was just caught in cross fire. But also he did hire her… so that’s a fault,” the source continued.

“Wholesalers were told they are both gone for good by leadership during in person conversations. They already shifted all their direct reports to new people and the head of marketing,” the source added in another text message obtained by the Caller.

I think the guy meant “field day,” but maybe “hay day” refers to the Clydesdales or something.

Bud Light Marketing Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid seems to have been the genius who came up with the plan to rebrand Bud Light as a fine Champagne of Beers™, which looking back turned out to be a bad move (apologies to Miller Brewing. Maybe I should have said Cosmo of Beers?)

In any case, the Bud Light fiasco now makes New Coke look like a brilliant marketing idea. It’s hard to recall a corporate faceplant this dramatic in recent times, at least one that didn’t involve fraud or poisoning of customers.

Anheuser-Busch is being close-lipped about exactly what has taken place, despite the claims made by the distributor/whistleblower. They only say that a “leave of absence” is being taken:

Update: 3:35pm ET: After the given deadline, Anheuser-Busch reached out with the following statement and did not address any of the questions asked by the Caller:

“Given the circumstances, Alissa has decided to take a leave of absence which we support. In the interest of our employees’ safety and privacy, we’re not providing any additional information. Daniel is taking a leave of absence. In the interest of our employees’ safety and privacy, we’re not providing any additional information,” an Anheuser-Busch spokesperson said.

The real problem that Bud Light has, though, is one shared with many other transnational corporations: contempt for their customers. Bud Light made the mistake of being very open about that contempt, but many corporations have moved away from the idea that they serve their customers first, their shareholders derivatively, and outside interests a distant third.

ESG, virtue signaling, and their buddies at the WEF are their primary interests now, and it is coming back to bite them in the butt. And while they may appear to behave stupidly, these people are not actually stupid. Now that they have paid a significant price for being openly contemptuous they are likely to pull back from such open admission of their disdain for you and me.

But fear not, fellow deplorable. They still deplore you. They will just be less open about it.

Which, I suppose, is a win.