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Our Kids Ain’t Learning Too Good

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Marin-I
Did you know that words can have more than one meaning? Pretty elementary stuff, you’d think. Unless, of course, you can use ignorance to create propaganda for your cause. This one might be funny, if it wasn’t presented so seriously. I can almost understand that the kids of Roseburg, Oregon might be confused, but their parents and the Marin Institute should feel at least a little embarrassed.

Here’s what happened. The Marin Institute today accused Anheuser-Busch InBev of targeting families by advertising “Family Packs” of beer for sale around the town of Roseburg. A youth group there, apparently confused, sent photos of the ads to the Marin Institute who promptly went on the attack.

Bud-Family

Here’s some of the rhetoric inspired by these ads:

“We knew that the Anheuser-Busch InBev marketing team was willing to stoop low, but this time they’ve really outdone themselves.”

“Cheaper than Capri Sun, it makes a perfect addition to a brownbag lunch for preschoolers and teenagers alike!”

Busch-Family

And here’s the final volley:

How does Anheuser-Busch InBev think they can get away with this? Maybe they figure if they keep it in local communities, next to your kids’ school (as opposed to say, on national TV during the Super Bowl), they won’t get caught. All the while, of course, proclaiming all the wonderful work they do to counter underage drinking with useless educational brochures. Sorry, Bud – you’re not fooling anyone.

Except that ABI isn’t advertising “Family Packs,” they’re advertising “24 Pack Cubes” and “30 Packs” of the “Bud Family” and “Busch Family.” Notice in the Bud ad, the two statements are on separate lines, “Bud Family” on one line, then “24 Pack Cubes” on the second. By “Bud Family,” ABI means the family of products under the “Budweiser label, which are:

The Bud Family

  • Budweiser
  • Bud Light
  • Budweiser Select
  • Bud Light Lime
  • Bud Light Golden Wheat

In the Busch ad, it’s on three lines. In this case, it includes the following beers:

The Busch Family

  • Busch
  • Busch Light
  • Busch Ice

Nobody’s trying to fool anybody. The ads are pretty clear if you know how to read and understand what words mean in context. Somebody really needs to buy the Marin Institute a copy of Eat, Shoots & Leaves. I don’t know the ages of the kids in the local “youth group,” so I can forgive them, but at some point an adult they encountered should have had enough book learning to point this out to them.

As to the fact that they accuse ABI of being “willing to stoop low” and declare “this time they’ve really outdone themselves,” all I can do is shake my head and think — yet again — this is such a perfect example of “the pot calling the [brew] kettle black.”



Comments

  1. Still, not very well though through by the marketing dept. If they had said “Bud Family of Beers” there would have been no controversy. Of course, as they say, bad publicity is better than no publicity.

    • My guess is they’ve been running ads like this for years, and it never occurred to anyone they could be misinterpreted so badly.

  2. “The ads are pretty clear if you know how to read and understand what words mean in context. ”

    Ah, but Jay, THAT would require an objective approach. It’s so much easier for them to just go into these things half-cocked!

  3. When my kids become teenagers, I’d much rather they drink the occasional Bud than the occasional Capri Sun! Of course, with any luck, they’ll find the taste of the former as disgusting as the latter and demand to drink instead samples of homebrew and craft brew.

  4. Jay if it takes that much effort to clarify that the ad actually is referring to the “bud family product line” then it is simply poor marketing.

    • I wanted to be thorough so there was no misunderstanding, since your press release seemed to miss the mark so badly. I won’t argue the quality of the marketing, but surely someone within your organization knew that the ads were not “targeting families” just by using the word “family.” Someone surely had to know the ads did not say or do what you claim. But you went ahead and attacked anyway, which is why I found it ironic that you would accuse ABI of stooping low, when your attack itself was not exactly high-minded, or accurate.

      Even conceding “poor marketing,” that’s still not the same as the nonsense you accused them of. If your press release had simply called the ads confusing or said it was poor marketing, that would have been one thing, but what you did was attack them very forcefully for what you knew was simply a mis-interpretation of the ads.