Budweiser Mocks Craft Beer Snobs, Sells Craft Beers

It’s fine if a company wants to mock the people who refuse to buy its products in an ad, including an ad aired during the Super Bowl. That was the point of a Budweiser commercial mocking the entire culture of beer snobbery…while Budweiser’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, owns brands that either are or imitate craft beer brands and trends, brewing some of them in the same facilities that make Budweiser.

Missed the Super Bowl, or missed this particular ad because you were in the kitchen grabbing another Goose Island 312? Here it is. Oh, and that Chicago-branded craft beer came from a Budweiser macro-brewery in Baldwinsville, NY.

The ad’s message is clear: some people like to sip and fuss over beers, and some people just like to drink ‘em. Craft beer fans found this insulting, and maybe that was the point. That’s a nice bit of brand differentiation, but Budweiser can’t be surprised that people are calling them out on their hypocrisy, because the company has noticed how the industry is changing in the United States, and is acquiring the craft brewery competition.

That means at the same time they mock pumpkin peach ales, AB InBev just signed a deal to by Elysian Brewing Co. in Washington state. Which used to make a pumpkin peach ale.

It’s a strange ad, trying to set up a social class and generational war among beer drinkers at the same time that the brand’s corporate parent has been planning for the future by acquiring successful breweries and creating its own brands, like Shock Top and Angry Orchard hard cider.

I kept waiting for the next tagline to be, “It’ll get you drunk!” as in the classic “Samuel L. Jackson beer” sketch on Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show. (That video is not remotely safe for work, or for sensitive ears. Click with caution.)

Bud mocks craft beer. But it owns microbrews! [CNN] (Warning: auto-play video)

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist