Another football season bring another blitz from AB InBev and Bud Light.
If you’re like me, sitting on my couch for hours on end each Sunday, you’ve likely seen Bud Light’s latest commercial spot. Titled “Bud Lights for Everyone,” it continues the attack on good, hardy mead lovers that first began last fall.
While the king enters The Clumsy Sword offering a round of Bud Lights, one patron asks for “a nice mead” instead. The king makes the exception, then the patron asks that the mead be “autumnal.” The king once again agrees to the request and asks the barkeep for “one autumnal mead.”
As the patron asks that the mead be malty and full-bodied, the king has clearly had enough and sends the patron to the stockade.
Now, if Bud Light did their homework, they’d know better that mead won’t typically be malty, unless perhaps it’s a braggot. But hey, what can you expect from the “King of Beers?”
It’s interesting to see Bud Light and AB InBev continue to attack mead (with the implicit attacks on craft beer) instead of their former full-on attack of craft. However, it’s new tagline, “For the many, not the few” isn’t all that subtle.
Perhaps it’s because while AB InBev fears craft beer and its increasing presence in the marketplace, they’re still trying to sell more “craft” themselves. The international beverage juggernaut continues to buy up craft brands and add them to their own portfolios, so it may be difficult for them to blatantly beat up on craft for the time being.
Mead offers a new target for Big Beer to bully around, without alienating other craft brands it may be wooing behind closed doors.
Bearded & Brewed 
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