ABI's Top Marketer Diagnoses the Bud Light Mess

“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,” Marcel Marcondes, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s global chief marketing officer, told an advertising  conference Monday (6/19).

To be sure, humility is a virtue.  But we suspect the problem isn't so much a lack of humility as the fact that ABI moved the A-B marketing department from St. Louis to New York a few years ago.  The explanation was that the move was needed in order to attract the best marketing talent.

That, dear reader, is pure rubbish.  Great marketing talent is found across this country.  In New York, Boston, Charleston, Atlanta, Chicago, Fort Worth, etc.  

If New York isn't the only place to find great marketing talent, then why did ABI uproot the A-B marketing department from St. Louis and move it to New York?  Two answers:  (1) To a European executive, New York is more "cosmopolitan" than St. Louis, and (2) it's a lot easier to fly from New York to Belgium, where AB InBev is technically headquartered, or to many of the company's other locations, than St. Louis.  

Both of those are understandable.  We think they are wrong, but they are understandable, and a reasonable exec could make a decision based on those two factors.

What the move to New York did, however, was disconnect A-B's marketers from their customers.  Where is beer the most popular?  In the Midwest.  What do they drink in the Boston-Washington corridor and most of New York State and New England?  Wine.

That's based on tweets about beer vs. wine (The Geography of Beer).  The coasts love wine, the Midwest loves beer.

Looked at from the standpoint of brands, Bud Light was popular from New England to Texas.  Busch or Miller Lite led in the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan) and the Upper Midwest.  From Virginia to Texas, the culture is radically different than New York City.

Midwesterners drink more beer than people in other regions and Northeasterners drink the least, according to the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse. In terms of gallons of beer consumed per capita, New York State ranks No. 47, Connecticut and New Jersey tie for No. 48, Maryland No. 50, and Rhode Island, No.44.  

Marketers often talk about meeting people where they are.  By moving A-B's marketing department to New York, ABI moved it from an area where most of its customers are to an area that vastly prefers wine.

We're almost certain that Bud Light's marketers, sitting in the midst of New York City, thought they were being really trendy and edgy by enlisting a transgender influencer to promote their brand.  If they were still in St. Louis, we don't think they would have made that mistake.

We'll know if ABI's top marketing people really have become humble by whether they move A-B's marketer out of wine and cocktail centric New York and back to beer drinking St. Louis.