WATCH: Bud Light pokes fun at marketing missteps in latest Shane Gillis ad
Just when you thought woke weirdness in commercials couldn’t get any worse, along comes Jaguar as if to say, “Hold my beer.”
Just as the iconic British carmaker drives its brand off a cliff with its latest ad, Bud Light continues to win back customers with its latest effort — its second spot starring stand-up Shane Gillis.
The Gillis campaign returns Bud Light to its pre-woke era, when the brand embraced comedy to appeal to its young, male customer base
As Blaze News reported in February, the beloved beer brand signed a marketing deal with Gillis in an attempt to repair the damage caused by its disastrous partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney.
The latter caused conservatives to spearhead a boycott, which caused Bud Light to drop from the top-selling beer to the third, while parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev lost roughly $1.4 billion in sales. In a bit of meta-commentary, the spot — entitled “Wrong Commercial” — finds Gillis showing up at what he thinks is the set of his latest Bud Light commercial — only to encounter a snake-handling femme fatale and an existentially depressed guitarist (all shot in black and white).
“I think I’m in the wrong commercial,” the flannel-clad Gillis announces, Bud Light in hand. “Yeah dude, this isn’t right.”
Meanwhile, the actor who is supposed to be in the avant-garde fragrance ad is at the Bud Light set: a raucous sports bar where he has the time of his life drinking beer, eating wings, and watching football.
Gillis’ first Bud Light commercial debuted in September.
The Gillis campaign returns Bud Light to its pre-woke era, when the brand embraced comedy to appeal to its young, male customer base in a series of memorable ads, including “Real Men of Genius,” “Bud Light Institute,” “The Hitchhiker,” “Paper or Plastic,” “Magic Fridge,” “Swear Jar,” “Dog Sitter,” and “Rock, Paper, Scissors.“
This run ended in 2022 when the company promoted Alissa Heinerscheid to vice president of marketing, the first female to fill the role.
From the start, Heinerscheid was outspoken about her intentions to shake things up. During an interview in March 2023, Heinerscheid declared that Bud Light needs to welcome more “inclusivity.”
“So I had this super clear mandate. It’s like, we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand,” Heinerscheid proclaimed. “And my … what I brought to that was a belief in, OK, what does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity. It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men.”
Heinerscheid expressed disgust for Bud Light’s previous marketing campaigns.
“And we had this hangover. I mean, Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach,” she stated.
You can watch the Shane Gillis Bud Light commercial below.
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