“There’s an authenticity element to what Ben & Jerry’s does.... When you have these large corporations that have a historic brand identity, it just looks inauthentic when they’re all of a sudden getting involved in these social campaigns,” said Anson Frericks.
Frericks "was Anheuser-Busch’s president of U.S. operations until last year [and]... is now co-founder and president with [Vivek] Ramaswamy of Strive Asset Management, an investment firm that has positioned itself against the trend toward socially and environmentally conscious investing."
I wasn't expecting to run into Ramaswamy in this article, but, we're told, he's "raised money off the Bud Light episode." He's quoted: “I think what Budweiser did would otherwise be inexplicable but for a corporate culture created by some of those top-down forces in American life.” Ramaswamy has a way of saying things that seem long-winded but, on closer examination, are actually quite concise and meaningful.
I wasn't expecting to run into Ramaswamy in this article, but, we're told, he's "raised money off the Bud Light episode." He's quoted: “I think what Budweiser did would otherwise be inexplicable but for a corporate culture created by some of those top-down forces in American life.” Ramaswamy has a way of saying things that seem long-winded but, on closer examination, are actually quite concise and meaningful.
Hey, this is my first Vivek Ramaswamy post. I wonder how many more there will be. And why didn't I put this up yesterday?
Posts
128 comments:
A very bright guy. Hope he gets some traction.
This is not complicated. People don't want to buy stuff from companies that hate them and want to eliminate their lifestyles and/or values. Before Trump this was common knowledge and most corporations stayed quiet.
I think political action reflects the general decline in mental health rather than Trump per se, and it follows from social media and shorter attention spans and the permanence of all speech with the Internet. It's not different from what happened in Europe 500 years ago with the rise of the printing press.
You are what you eat, drive etc.
The Audi TT is Ann Althouse!
My BMW is DDB.
The ‘You can’t because you aren’t black’ has always been a stupid argument made by stupid people.
I really like Ramaswamy. I wish he was getting more attention.
The problem with the Bud Light thing is it was so off brand. A fuck you to their loyal customers. With Ben and Jerry you knew their shtick, at least until they sold out.
And with that, Don Lemon slowly sinks into the West...
Perhaps we begin to enter the end of the great era of silence on this and related matters. It's going to take a lot more failure like this from those who would keep Vivek's jaws wired shut to make that happen, but I think those folks have got what it takes to fail that badly. White people can't say this stuff, but it's not just white and black people any more.
The defense Lemon relies upon is strong but fragile. Once it cracks, the game is over.
Budlight-boycott-politics-republicans is the NYT url tag on this article. Republicans pounce!!!
Ben and Jerry do not run Ben and Jerry ice-cream.
Ben and Jerry is owned by a big corporation. Why it no longer tastes good.
Is the article saying that Ben & Jerry's can dabble in leftwing politics because they've always done so and we expect it of them? They alienated rightwing customers years ago, back before all the wannabes started copying them. You can't just start offending people with your advertising out of the blue. It takes years to build that buffer.
… investment firm that has positioned itself against the trend toward socially and environmentally conscious investing."
Is he applying some sort of socially conscious contra indicator discipline? A get woke go broke short strategy? Hmmmm…
Socially conscious investing has always been a road to underperformance. I still have papers from the 1980s from when I was a student talking about this. Peter Lynch and others always spoke about the value of investing in profitable companies that do something unpopular. Sin, vice, war…
"The ‘You can’t because you aren’t black’ has always been a stupid argument made by stupid people."
Yeah but it's all black America has at the end of the day, I'll suspend the back-half of that comment about 'stupid people' and let people come to their own conclusions.
"actually quite concise and meaningful"
Glad you noticed. Vivek is a force for good.
Now, do mixed marriages in commercials.
I actually think it's quite common for ad companies to prepare campaigns to impress other ad companies. No one at the company expected that Mulvaney would actually help the sales of Bud Light. He was just supposed to be something for the ad people to put on their resumés. And no one in the approval chain for his ads knew the company's customers well enough to understand why this would be taken as an insult.
Ben and Jerry's is also just such a good product. Nothing else even comes close. I would love to give my money to someone other company but no one else competes there.
You do know Ben & Jerry don’t make the ice cream in the gas station anymore, right?
Ben and Jerrys - when you put politics above taste.
The one rhetorical mistake I think Ramaswamy makes (in describing his new book, Capitalist Punishment) is attributing problems to the ascendency of a "managerial class."
I get that in his book he's making a more nuanced argument about corporate governance and asset management and the growing divergence between the interest of shareholders and executive management that goes way back to Galbraith's New Industrial State and before, etc.
But on interview, I think people would identify with "political class," "bureaucratic class" or "elite" as more descriptive of the organizational do-nothings, harm-doers and financial titans they see who infect most institutions today.
Why alienate a bunch of lower-middle managers who do all the actual day-to-day heavy lifting hearing "managerial class" on the chat shows?
Otherwise, I think Ramaswamy is over the target.
Glad to see that a post about stupid Ben and Jerry's turned into an historic Althouse post, the First to mention Ramaswamy! May there be many more.
He's a tonic of intelligent discourse for the country.
(and his clarity was like a grenade to Don Lemon's intelligence, leaving him sputtering.)
More please.
G*dspeed, America.
The AB fiasco should be a reminder to corporate America that the duty to the shareholders is their only concern. That is what management is for and that is what the board is supposed to make sure of. A lot of heads need to roll at AB and directors pushed to resign.
The AB fiasco should be a reminder to corporate America that the duty to the shareholders is their only concern. That is what management is for and that is what the board is supposed to make sure of. A lot of heads need to roll at AB and directors pushed to resign.
The ‘You can’t because you aren’t black’ has always been a stupid argument made by stupid people.
Even worse is "You can't expect me to be on time and try my hardest, because that's Whiteness".
If Fox was smart (they're not), they'd hire Vivek to replace Carlson. He has less than zero chance of getting the nomination, and would have 50 times the impact if he were on each night.
The potential inferences of "Great Replacement" are a joy to contemplate.
Ben and Jerry are the kind of embarrassed self-hating Jews that every Jew who doesn't hold Israel to a higher standard than 191 other countries knows and despises. (I kept wishing that the two characters based on them in City Slickers would get trampled by a buffalo.)
Of course Ben and Jerry's is acceptable, they've been hard left for years.
Don Lemon feels "insulted" only because he lacks a cogent argument against Ramaswamy - who is, BTW, a true Liberal.
Vivek's speaking truth to power, making Lemon very uncomfortable.
Enigma said...
This is not complicated. People don't want to buy stuff from companies that hate them and want to eliminate their lifestyles and/or values. Before Trump this was common knowledge and most corporations stayed quiet.
No, it's not, but I constantly shake my head at how the "smarter than everyone" crowd doesn't seem to understand it. (For the record; former Inbev VP Alissa Heinerscheid is a graduate of both Harvard and Wharton.)
New England, where Ben & Jerry's got its start, is home to several brands of ice cream, many of them much better quality. B&J's used "wokeness" to sell themselves to people who wanted to assuage themselves from the guilt of eating highly over-priced ice cream. If you're a person who can enjoy a bowl of ice cream without feeling the need to confess your sins, B&J's is not the brand you eat.
I found the Lemon interview with Ramaswamy very frustrating because Lemon wouldn't let Vivek speak a full sentence before he (Lemon) would talk over him. So many "interviewers" do that.... That's not an interview, that's simply an excuse to expound the interviewer's opinions.
You really should check out more of Ramaswamy's twitter posts and/or other interviews: he's one of the better communicators out there (eg., speaks in complete sentences, which is becoming a lost art), with the bonus of having sensible conservative opinions, and he's unafraid to share them.... He's sort of a combination of a Reagan-like easy, coherent and logical communicator with Dr. Sowell-like basic economic and political common sense opinions.
I take his point. Frederick's of Hollywood would perhaps benefit from having Dylan as a spokesperson but not so much Bud Light. I think Ben & Jerry's could also use the services of Dylan, but it would be wise to not having him appear with the Tutti Frutti flavor....By Dylan, I mean Dylan Mulvaney and not Bob Dylan. I don't think Bob Dylan could move product at Frederick's of Hollywood. He might fit in with Ben & Jerry's brand, however, if they ever bring out a cracked sandpaper flavor.
I can’t believe the Bud Light brouhaha is still going on! It is easily the most overblown story this year because most of it is made up fake outrage by a few people who dislike diversity and hate gay and trans people. Conservative sites and media did more to promote Dylan and Bud Light than anyone on the left did. Most on the left frankly didn’t care and most moderates would have not even known about an Instragram page promoting Bud Light. But every day for weeks conservative sites made a big deal out of it - ironically giving Dylan more coverage than ever.
I haven’t used a Gillette product in years and my son, who now shaves, won’t be using a Gillette product that I bought him.
A-B wasn't seeking to get involved in a social movement, this is just an attempt to rebrand what the corporation was trying to do.
The marketing VP who came up with the Mulvaney campaign stated she was trying to find a way to appeal to younger and female consumers, to get them to buy more Bud Light. She was trying to expand the market for her company's product, to sell more beer. That's all, she wasn't on some grand progressive mission to fix the world.
I don't know what kind of marketing analysis that VP did beforehand, it would be fascinating to see or if she even did any kind of study to try and determine if the Mulvaney thing would resonate before she unleashed it. Of course, it's unfortunate that a trans person would even be viewed as some kind of edgy, cool marketing device, that they should be required to perform for the rest of us.
The vast majority of people buying things do not want to be tied to something they are not purchasing. They are buying a beer because they are thirsty for beer, and a beer is just a beer; it's not a philosophy. Having ideas you don't agree with stuffed down your throat when you go to drink a brew, or eat some ice cream, simply won't work as a marketing strategy. The sellers are demanding your attention and implicitly, your agreement. F*ck them. Reject the sale, starve out the idea.
I thought you were trying to avoid this subject, yet I see more and more posts on it. There is only do or do not, there is no try.
Enigma nails it in the second comment. There is nothing complicated here. The VP of Marketing was clear that Bud Light didn’t want people whom they couldn’t even properly identify, just the old market. They wanted a new market, and they got it good and hard.
While I think they are idiots, Ben & Jerry have never pretended to be anything other than what they are.
Enigma is correct.
I will add that more and more people are catching on. A lot of people, including myself, would just shrug off the latest indignity as nothing to be concerned about or just a one off. The more and more this happens, it becomes apparent that, no, these organizations, or at least the persons running these organizations, overtly hate you. There are some organizations that I was a huge fan that I have had to cut off completely since I simply cannot support organizations that want to harm me. This apparently makes me an "aggressor."
Brands have power, this is why companies try to develop brands.
Take Ben & Jerry's, we know that they're communist hippies, but they've always been communist hippies and their ice cream is good, so we buy it.
Bud light, was supported by 40 years of clever and highly produced ad campaigns to build it up as one of the top light beer brands. It's hard to understand how serious marketing managers would be so cavalier about tainting a brand with so much history and investment spent on it.
I know Ramaswamy from his work against ESG "investing" (a truly vile concept; when I send my money to Vanguard I don't want them giving it to people who are trying to take away my car). I didn't know he was running for President.
“I think what Budweiser did would otherwise be inexplicable but for a corporate culture created by some of those top-down forces in American life.”
YES. Repeat that: "top-down forces." *This* is what people are pushing back against, not necessarily some flamboyant internet star. Massive, unprecedented societal changes are being imposed on the people from above. These are not organic changes produced by the masses. That is a huge distinction.
Multi-billion-dollar corporations, including the media industry, are deciding monumental issues that *the people are still deliberating.* That is intolerable and unsustainable.
Yes, "things change." The way we speak changes. But legitimate change moves from the masses up, not from the elite down. Top-down speech codes and massive cultural revisions are intolerable and unsustainable.
As is the shrinking window of time from when an unprecedented idea is introduced - male athletes can compete against women - and when dissent is declared un-American. Intolerable.
Post Trump winning in 2016, the Left went completely bughouse nuts, and the "upper middle class", and the "upper" class, in America decided to identify with the Left.
Thus we have American corporations now being run by people who effectively hate the majority of Americans.
You know, like the 60% of Americans who understand that your "gender" is your "sex", which is "where you born with a penis, or a vagina?"
AB has been a GOP backing company, but they've been a "Bush GOP" backing company, so they were not immune to the wave of stupidity.
Sales down 17%, and Miller and Coors both having their sales go up, because normal people don't want to have anything to do with freaks, especially with woman hating freaks who want to barge into the bathrooms and locker rooms the normal men's wives, sisters, and daughters are using, and / or who want to destroy their wives, sisters, and daughters ability to compete in women's sports
Don Lemon tied the noose (figuratively speaking) when he melted down in a sexist tirade over Nikki Haley then stuck his neck in it with his racist ignorant rant at Vivek little over a week ago. He can’t stand people of color who think for themselves, an extremely common affliction on the Left, especially in Lefty Big Media circles. He just couldn’t master the subtlety needed to get away with it like most talking heads manage to do.
“There’s an authenticity element to what Ben & Jerry’s does."
It is called classic antisemitism.
More interested in that CNN clip. Lemon's behavior is a disgrace. All that b.s. about his skin color. God, when will that ever stop.
I like Ramaswamy's overall point here, though I am not sure how central gun ownership was to the emergence and success of the civil rights movement. It was however certainly a part of it, because that movement was impossible until local black communities had built an institutional support system of churches, businesses, community organizations that, in places like Montgomery, Tallahassee, Baton Rough, Birmingham, etc., were strong enough to sustain the direct-action mass protests of King, SNCC, CORE, etc. Gun rights and gun ownership played a part in that spirit and reality of self-assertion as further emboldening blacks to oppose the violence that threatened them. Does Lemon seriously take issue with their need to secure that right for themselves? I actually had a hard time telling what he was saying about it so focused was he on posturing and blathering.
Lemon is an idiot and an insult to black people to say nothing of the human race generally.
I always thought Suburu did a great job of knowing who really likes them and absolutely embracing it -- people in Colorado, lesbians and pet owners (check out all the stuff Suburu does with dogs!) -- and in a way that doesn't alienate anyone.
I thought Lemon looked like the worst sort of mental light-weight against Ramaswamy (would have loved it if Ramaswamy had asked Lemon whether he had read Justice Thomas' opinions and concurrences re the 2nd Amendment). Really powerful stuff.
Vivek's got some game!
Little Don, not so much.
Love Vivek!
https://www.pentagram.com/work/ben-s-best-blnz/story
Ben Cohen on a “joint” adventure.
~ eyeroll ~
Our milk used to supply that Co. I used to be proud of a VT company outstanding in it’s field. Then we went organic and supply Stonyfield. Live Free!!
Who can afford B&J’s ice cream on a farmers tiny slice of the pie?? Not I…
Hahah.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qp0coPQ_htg
I love this guy- so very smart.
Hahah.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qp0coPQ_htg
I love this guy- so very smart.
Years before B & J sold their name/brand, we visited their creamery and had a tour. I would guess that 30% of the product going into containers ended up wasted -- spills, tears, dropping off the conveyor, whatever. Just a pitiful production process -- and they deemed it OK to show to visitors!
I don't like B&J ice cream. (Or Jeni's! Graeters all the way for me if I'm in Ohio) Here in Madison I like Chocolate Shoppe. Or Purple Door out of Milwaukee. If you can't find a local (vs. multinational) ice cream, I'm sorry for you.
BUMBLE BEE said, "Now, do mixed marriages in commercials."
They already do, and it's always a black guy and white woman.
Drafting on trendy stuff works:
Ben & Jerry - the hippie 'ethic'. Cherry Garcia, etc.
The Gap (generation gap). Hippies liked wearing 'working man' Levis.
But A-B fucked up. Wrong target group.
Regardless, Dylan could sell cosmetics, diet food, even another alcoholic drink.
Me, I'd shoot him holding a bottle of Midori astride a Clydesdale. Super snotty.
I'm quite impressed with the smallish dairies in my tri-county area. The produce quality products like ice cream that obliterate the big brands, especially corporate Ben and Jerry's. If you aren't looking for them, you lose.
Matt said...
I can’t believe the Bud Light brouhaha is still going on! It is easily the most overblown story this year because most of it is made up fake outrage by a few people who dislike diversity and hate gay and trans people.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I wish it was rare to see such a complete lack of understanding of an event. These sound like talking points distributed to our Leftist friends here from their fave websites.
Having gotten a very modest sampling of Vivek Ramaswamy's rhetoric, I can second the commenters here who think well of him. He is one smart and articulate dude, and his policy ideas make a lot of sense. And can we hope that Vivek's demolition of Lemon helped to push him out the door at CNN?
PS: great comments here. CJinPA: totally agree with your "top down vs. bottom up" argument. The art of good marketing/propaganda is to make the audience believe it was their idea, or at least their unarticulated attitudes and values that inform and drive the particular notion being marketed/propagated...
Tucker didn't dub Don Lemon 'the dumbest man in television" for nothing. Lemon has lived his entire life as a privileged and protected affirmative action mascot, the token's token.
He reminds me of the comment made by some B/black public intellectual (can't recall who) about the Second Amendment and how little it meant to him. "It wasn't written for me," he explained.
Neither was the First, I thought. Will you shut up now?
Vivek ("vee-cake" he said on Gutfeld! last night) is too earnest and preppy to get much popular traction IMO, and if he keeps talking about Martin Luther in public he'll lose a lot of people.
Ramaswonky.
The only authentic thing that Ben and Jerry's has done is admitt to literally sugarcoating antisemitism and supporting the murder of jews in Israel.
Alissa Heinerscheid's great crime wasn't trying to be inclusive and it wasn't about putting a tranny on a can. Her crime was in that video taking a giant crap on Bud Light's current customer base.
Imagine if Ann recommended a book to another man. No big deal. But then she made a vid and casually commenting that Meade is too illiterate to understand the story.
Divorce court.
I really like Ramaswamy. I wish he was getting more attention.
Compare and contrast with Obama.
Obama was and is an empty suit. Ramaswamy has obvious gravitas. Not the 'emperors new clothes" kind provided by the media. ("I really like the crease in is slacks" "...a clean articulate Black man...")
Graeter’s is infinitely better than Ben & Jerry’s and as far as I know has never taken a stance on any political issue - unless “huge delicious chunks of real ingredients like chocolate and strawberry” is a political issue, in which case they are ALL. IN.
-Rafe
Graeter’s is infinitely better than Ben & Jerry’s and as far as I know has never taken a stance on any political issue - unless “huge delicious chunks of real ingredients like chocolate and strawberry” is a political issue, in which case they are ALL. IN.
-Rafe
Ben and Jerry recently appeared on "The Tonight Show" to present a special ice cream flavor to actress Ana De Armas, who's supposedly a fan. They may not own the company anymore, but they're basically its mascots -- like Tony the Tiger or Ronald McDonald.
Sales down 17%, and Miller and Coors both having their sales go up, because normal people don't want to have anything to do with freaks, especially with woman hating freaks who want to barge into the bathrooms and locker rooms the normal men's wives, sisters, and daughters are using, and / or who want to destroy their wives, sisters, and daughters ability to compete in women's sports
You dumbasses do realize that both Miller/Coors and Anheuser Busch are owned by InBev, a Belgian company, that has breweries in 30 countries and sells in 130 countries.
I also like Ramaswamy. I've donated already and will in the future.
Using Dylan Mulvaney to appeal to women is one of the stupidest marketing concepts I've ever heard of. Why would women be attracted to a beer touted by a woman-mocking man? One that pretends he's a girl, not even an adult woman. Hank Johnson-level stupidity.
I'll never buy B&J's ice cream because of their politics. They've always been left wing and don't pretend to be anything else. Good for them. I'll stick to Tillamook ice cream, made in Tillamook OR by the dairy coop there. Good stuff and they don't push propaganda on the customer, except for how happy their cows are.
Oh yeah, and Ben & Jerry's is owned by Unilever (and has been since 2000). Granted, the sales agreement allowed them to continue their political and social activism without interference for corporate headquarters in England.
Meh. The only interesting point here, is that when Budweiser is trying to figure out how to sell more beer, they don't talk to a brewmaster. Because it's not about making a better product, it's about telling a more effective lie.
In case you missed it, Ben and Jerry’s is owned by another big European conglomerate, Unilever.
Sally327 wrote:
"The marketing VP who came up with the Mulvaney campaign stated she was trying to find a way to appeal to younger and female consumers, to get them to buy more Bud Light. She was trying to expand the market for her company's product, to sell more beer. That's all, she wasn't on some grand progressive mission to fix the world."
There are only two options here- she was either an utter moron for not anticipating the problem it would cause the brand, or she was doing exactly what you deny she was doing. I usually don't blame malice (or intended conduct) for what is more easily explained by stupidity, but this is an edge case. I do think there were people on that marketing team who do, in fact, despise their consumer base, and that this was a poke in the eye. In that, either stupid or not, they have betrayed the shareholders massively.
"People don't want to buy stuff from companies that hate them and want to eliminate their lifestyles and/or values."
For me the tell that the only thing Progressives want is power, would be the attack on Wendy's simply because the owner donated to pro life organizations. Well Wendy's has 140,000 employees, the majority of which are working the front line slinging chicken for minimum wadge.
Progressives tell us their "Fight for Fifteen" is to improve the lives of minimum wage workers (it's not; union wages are pegged to the minimum wage). So on the one hand, Progressives tell us they want to help these poor folks, and at the same, time try to shutter the place where these poor folks are employed. All because they hate the owner's political leanings.
Full disclosure: The other side is just as disingenuous and power hungry.
Wilbur said...
Don Lemon feels "insulted" only because he lacks a cogent argument against Ramaswamy - who is, BTW, a true Liberal.
Yes! True liberals champion free and individual thinking and expression, which now sounds "Far-Right" to The Don Lemons and Leftie Obamabots of the world.
Make Liberalism Great Again.
Has this marketing disaster taken sales from Budweiser (not BudLite) as well??
I don't think Bob Dylan could move product at Frederick's of Hollywood.
He did a commercial for Victoria's Secret a number of years ago (late 90's ?). No idea if that help sales or not, but it did get a lot of publicity at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eQ43ZDV61c
Dylan, being the prophet that he is, said in 1965 that if he ever sold out it would be for ladies garments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBq7SyGtG8Y&t=9s
William said...
I take his point. Frederick's of Hollywood would perhaps benefit from having Dylan as a spokesperson but not so much Bud Light.
--
A cosmetics line would be more appropriate.
Original Mike said...
I know Ramaswamy from his work against ESG "investing" (a truly vile concept; when I send my money to Vanguard I don't want them giving it to people who are trying to take away my car). I didn't know he was running for President.
--
Vanguard is now claiming to be backing away from ESG etc. I'm surprised you didn't know he announced some time ago. Leave it to "D-Lemon" to somehow give CNN an excuse to fire him while elevating profile of Vivek Ramaswamey..which is so much fun to say. He's got the most syllables.
""The ‘You can’t because you aren’t black’ has always been a stupid argument made by stupid people.""
You know who is Black and as such have an objective view of Black folks? Somalis. And they hate African Americans' guts. As does the rest of the world. Seriously, the whole damn world. From Venezuela to Laos. I have witnessed this first-hand countless times. And African Americans have "woke" Hollywood to thank for that.
I recommend following his Twitter feed, it's on Twitter that I become a fan for his clear, descriptive speech.
https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy
The only authentic things about Ben & Jerry are the product and their authentic virtue signaling by mouthing support for every far left cause, especially hating Israel, that they could. They don't control the brand, an international conglomerate does, just like AB controlled by InBev. InBev can tolerate the $5B drop in market cap here for A-B because they are a "global" company uninterested in what their American consumers think.
What the whole "outspoken" Ben & Jerry story reveals is that in America voicing support for hard-left apartheid like treatment of Jews is cool, your company and brand will not pay a price for being so out of touch with America and our values. Because conservatives don't see spending their money on what they want as a political act. To the left the Personal is relentlessly political. So a company paying even mild respect to conservative principles or issues publicly can be hounded out of existence by people who are not even their customers, just for being on the "wrong side" of an issue.
So the risk-reward equation facing marketing professionals makes it easy to avoid doing anything "conservative" while making it almost obligatory to voice or suggest agreement with lefty fads. If we cons need another nudge, then Big Government is happy to step in and provide subsidies, food or car or energy investment supporting gobs of sweet free taxpayer cash, so the right people can do the wrong thing voluntarily and we never push back, never use the same powers to nudge people rightward.
“I got a cravin’ love for blazing speed
Got a hopped up Mustang Ford
Jump into the wagon, love, throw your panties overboard
I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind
I’m no pig without a wig
I hope you treat me kind
Things are breakin’ up out there
High water everywhere”
Static Ping said...
Enigma is correct.
I will add that more and more people are catching on. A lot of people, including myself, would just shrug off the latest indignity as nothing to be concerned about or just a one off. The more and more this happens, it becomes apparent that, no, these organizations, or at least the persons running these organizations, overtly hate you. There are some organizations that I was a huge fan that I have had to cut off completely since I simply cannot support organizations that want to harm me. This apparently makes me an "aggressor."
4/26/23, 10:33 AM
THIS^^^^
Graeters will ship. Black Raspberry Choco Chip, Egg Nog and Peppermint Stick around the holidays for me…
farmgirl said "Our milk used to supply that Co. I used to be proud of a VT company outstanding in it’s field. Then we went organic and supply Stonyfield. Live Free!!"
THANK YOU!!! Stonyfield is the ONLY milk I buy!!
"Vanguard is now claiming to be backing away from ESG etc."
There may be less there than meets the eye, according to a WSJ article from a few months ago. But I'm keeping my eye on it. I was planning on moving a boatload of our retirement savings there but have put that move on hold. Most of our savings are currently with BlackRock, who is definitely going to lose them.
The ad campaign might have blown over--some damage I imagine--but dropped out of sight.
Then she calls the people who are CURRENTLY paying her salary "fratty" and "out of touch" and, implicitly not worthy to drink Bud Lite.
BEFORE she's developed an alternate source of income to continue paying her salary.
"You dumbasses do realize that both Miller/Coors and Anheuser Busch are owned by InBev, a Belgian company, that has breweries in 30 countries and sells in 130 countries."
Why do just spout these ridiculous lies? They're easy to check. Coors and Miller are owned by Molson/Coors, a publicly traded independent company.
Yancey Ward @ 12:36: "...they have betrayed the shareholders massively."
Amen. I find it interesting (and surprising) that again and again we see these betrayals of the one group to whom absolute fealty is owed: the owners. Dammitall, it's their money. And even more important than the money is the trust that inspired its owners to place it in the care of these servants. Once that trust is broken, sayo-effing-nara, baby.
I know I simplify (ignoring the "managerial class" and the diffusion of accountability through mutual funds and corporate superegos and any amount of caselaw about discretion and business judgement and delegation and agency). But I hope my simplification is not a distortion but a return to the essential idea: you promised honest effort in my behalf, I believed your promise and gave you my savings, and now what has happened? No less equivalently, you promised to build a "community" (brand) which would meet my needs and hopes, I believed your promise and gave you my consumer dollars, and now what has happened?
These people have a lot to answer for.
Oh...apparently Maybelline has picked him..
Why would women be attracted to a beer touted by a woman-mocking man?
Because white women with degrees get a kick out of anyone who will join them in despising hetero men.
Don Lemon defaults to argument from identity because he can't make the common sense objection to Ramaswamy and the NRA's Libertarian position. "So, all these young Black gangbangers shooting up Black neighborhoods are just exercising their Civil Rights? And you libertarian 2d Amendment types keep saying, a well-armed society is a polite society. Is that really how it's working out in Black neighborhoods in the USA?"
But Don Lemon (and elected Black leaders) can't make those arguments. Mostly because they oppose any meaningful enforcement of existing gun laws, much less what would be required to deny all gun ownership, in Black neighborhoods. So instead, they engage in ritual combat against the NRA and Red State Republicans to prohibit compliant white men from buying "assault weapons" (responsible for 1/4 of the homicides caused by knives). This is what passes for politics in the declining years of the American Republic.
Freder you magnificent dope, Molson/Coors owns Miller.
To my mind, the Prius is an ugly car. But the appeal is that by driving one, you are telling the world you care. It's a form of virtue signaling. I wonder if Toyota deliberately designed it with this in mind.
Marketing is as simple as, "Don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle."
I've heard Vivek Ramaswamy speak on two different podcasts now. I like his message. But he has a major flaw that Trump also has. The first duty you have as President is nominating the people to fill out the various roles in the vast government. Those people then get vetted and accepted by the Senate. We now know many of the people Trump appointed ended up working against him because their interest was that of the Washington bureaucracy and not that of the President.
This doesn't mean voting for someone else solves the problem, because it absolutely does not. However, if nobody starts the discussion about this poison pill that protects the "establishment", then what happened to Trump will happen to Ramaswamy.
But every day for weeks conservative sites made a big deal out of it - ironically giving Dylan more coverage than ever.
Well, that would certainly explain why they've lost five billion in market cap and sales are down 18 percent across the board.
You're welcome. I guess.
You dumbasses do realize that both Miller/Coors and Anheuser Busch are owned by InBev, a Belgian company, that has breweries in 30 countries and sells in 130 countries.
Wikipedia seems unaware of this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AB_InBev_brands
But even if it were true, [shrug] so InBev would have hedged. Good business. They also would appear to allow each of their brands to operate more or less independently of the others (otherwise the hedging wouldn't work, of course), but I doubt if their killer move would be for one of their brands to alienate a bunch of otherwise very loyal customers. (It's funny to me how loyal Bud drinkers are. And you can bet there has been a Bud backlash even though Bud drinkers explicitly don't drink Bud Lite or Light or whatever it is.)
You dumbasses do realize that both Miller/Coors and Anheuser Busch are owned by InBev, a Belgian company, that has breweries in 30 countries and sells in 130 countries.
Miller/Coors is 100 percent owned by Molson Coors.
Dumbass.
Blogger Jersey Fled said...
In case you missed it, Ben and Jerry’s is owned by another big European conglomerate, Unilever.
Yes, our hostess still thinks they are Vermont hippies.
Blogger Jupiter said...
Meh. The only interesting point here, is that when Budweiser is trying to figure out how to sell more beer, they don't talk to a brewmaster. Because it's not about making a better product, it's about telling a more effective lie.
Yes, that's called the Schlitz "marketing strategy.
First, the brewery cut costs by starting to swap in cheaper ingredients including corn syrup for malted barley and hop pellets for fresh hops. The hope was that if they did it slow enough, drinkers wouldn't notice. While the changes worked, at least for a little while, other breweries like Anheuser-Busch and Miller accused Schlitz of selling green beer, or beer that is too young.
Leave it diversitists, abortionists, liberals, and progressive sects to deprecate women, children, and babies, too.
The Civil War was not fought to free black people.
The Civil War was not fought to free black people. That was one result, not the cause.
Folks… my wife just shared an Instagram post from one of our nieces where she shares that she found out this morning that their bank accounts have been emptied and all stolen funds wired to Russia in several transactions… she was on the phone with Chase when they were making another attempt, although already drained. She’s in shock and has no idea what she or her husband did to facilitate the theft.
WTF. Has this sort of thing been happening all along in the background to other Americans? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.
" ... one observer said."
Well ... that settles it.
"Maybe it's real. Maybe it's make-believe."
Nothing would make me eat Ben and Jerry's! Antisemitic bastards.
"You dumbasses do realize that both Miller/Coors and Anheuser Busch are owned by InBev, a Belgian company, that has breweries in 30 countries and sells in 130 countries"
Freder, you have made a mistake and are too stupid to know it. InBev purchased SABMiller, a South African brewer, which divested the stake it shared with MolsonCoors in the Miller brand upon its acquisition by InBev (was probably an anti-trust issue). In any case, Miller Brewing is wholey owned by Molson-Coors, which has no connection to InBev- it is a completely separate company. I guess us dumbasses are smarter than you, so what does that mean for you?
Freder… your work are dun here.
edwhy said...
The Civil War was not fought to free black people.
you're RIGHT..
The Civil War was not fought to free black people, it was fought to CONTINUE enslaving them.
Please remember who started the civil war (hint, it was the people that fired the 1st shots)
Serious Question..
Is there a person, on earth (including Freder) that is surprised that Freder is clueless?
If any of you out there (including Freder) is surprised.. Please speak up.
Anyone? Any one at all?
Figured out how lightbulbs work yet, dumbass?
"Because white women with degrees get a kick out of anyone who will join them in despising hetero men."
Ding ding ding. We have a winrar. That is some USDA prime 28-day dry-aged truth.
I wish blogspot allowed up votes. Doug knocked it out the park.
And, expect Freder to disappear again for a few months hoping no one remembers how stupid he is.
IRT Iman- my daughter had her bank account cleaned out a few days ago; she uses a local credit union. Don't know if it's related. She claims it was related to booking an event in London using her credit card.
IRT Matt- conservatives don't hate/fear transgender or homosexual people; that's a convenient red herring wielded by activists. It is true that we won't celebrate behavior that is antithetical to our values. Using someone like Dylan Mulvaney in a beer ad is a poke in the eye to the majority of their audience.
Interesting, Tomcc… heard some good news from niece:
“I think i’m going to report it for sure to local f b I. The bank has already given us our money back. We had just switched to all new accounts, cancelled other accounts. Now we’re just dealing with that headache. Changing all my passwords. Etc. Thank you so much for your support in my fight against the russians!”
Something else to worry about, like more is needed.
Rehajm said, “Greeters will ship. Black Raspberry Choco Chip, Egg Nog and Peppermint Stick around the holidays for me…“
I just looked at their website. At $10 a pint, we are in Nancy Pelosi territory here.
"'Then suddenly that bucket is not just cream and sugar, it’s something else,' said Americus Reed, a professor of marketing."
And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
- S Freud
Dave Begley said...
"You are what you eat, drive etc. The Audi TT is Ann Althouse!"
Blogger rehajm said...
"The ‘You can’t because you aren’t black’ has always been a stupid argument made by stupid people."
Putting those two together, does that mean that my white Audi A5 cannot identify with my previous black Nissan Maxima?
"Why do just spout these ridiculous lies? They're easy to check. Coors and Miller are owned by Molson/Coors, a publicly traded independent company."
I kinda doubt Freder is lying. Likely he got it off some lefty website. But is Freder smart enough to realize they were lying to him? Doubtful.
Gratuitous insults have always made Freder stand out here. He's been doing it for many years. He can't just tell you you're wrong, he's got to throw in the insult. Everybody makes mistakes. But nobody faceplants with such panache.
"my daughter had her bank account cleaned out a few days ago; she uses a local credit union. Don't know if it's related. She claims it was related to booking an event in London using her credit card."
I don't see how that would work. Wouldn't using a credit card insulate her back account?
Ben's new flavor
"Gratuitous insults have always made Freder stand out here. He's been doing it for many years."
He was doing the same shit at John Hawkins' old place at rightwingnews dot com in the early aughts.
I'd feel sorry for him after all these years if he wasn't such an asshole.
Re: Iman, re: bank fraud:
Probably not the same, because in my case they attempted to ACH transfer funds to another American bank (and also write a fraudulent check against my account). But last summer, yes, someone tried to drain my account. It was only my good luck that the check hit the account the same day, prompting me to check my account only to see two gigantic ACH transfers pending, that enabled the bank to block the transfers (though, most frustratingly, they couldn't make any guarantees, and they told me I had to call myself in a particular window in the morning to make sure the transfers that had already been initiated were blocked from completion, rather than just doing it themselves). On the plus side, I didn't lose my money. On the downside, I reported it to the police and they closed the file without doing any investigation because I didn't actually lose any money.
The fraudulent transfers were preceded by a handful of microtransactions (<1usd) in and out of the account, net zero, which is apparently a way of testing to make sure an account is valid before trying to siphon funds. Apparently financial institutions do this to when you authorise direct debit arrangements, so it's not always fraudulent, but it sounds like it's pretty easy to falsify the direct debit authorisation process, which I think must be what happened to me. So there's a thing to look for, I guess, given that banks' fraud departments aren't catching this stuff.
I've known Freder Frederson should really be named Dunning Krugerson ever since he ridiculed the thermodynamics of electric heating and lighting.
Yancey Ward: "And, expect Freder to disappear again for a few months hoping no one remembers how stupid he is."
Field Marshall Freder's deserved reputation will follow him always.
Matt said...
I can’t believe the Bud Light brouhaha is still going on! It is easily the most overblown story this year because most of it is made up fake outrage by a few people who dislike diversity and hate gay and trans people.
We HATE "diversity", as it's currently defined, which is:
1: Being racist pigs (defining "diversity by skin color is inherently racist"
2: Hating normal people
Gay and "trans" people are an insignificant minority of the population that are demanding our attention. Fine, they have it: we hate them
Do you want to simply live your life without imposing on other people? knock yourself out! Have fun!
Do you want to force your freakish and loser ways on the rest of us? GFY
You can't believe that we normal people are tired of you freaks trying to force your bullshit on the rest of us?
Believe it
You can have tolerance, or you can have hatred.
Tolerance is not "liking", or "valuing", or "respecting" or "validating" or "affirming". Tolerance is "I'll put up with you, as long as you leave me alone."
You won't leave me alone? Then I won't leave you alone. Which is what you deserve
Sally327 said...
A-B wasn't seeking to get involved in a social movement, this is just an attempt to rebrand what the corporation was trying to do.
The marketing VP who came up with the Mulvaney campaign stated she was trying to find a way to appeal to younger and female consumers, to get them to buy more Bud Light. She was trying to expand the market for her company's product, to sell more beer. That's all, she wasn't on some grand progressive mission to fix the world.
Wrong
She explicitly stated she was trying to make the company "less fratty"
She hates the current customers, and wants to "bring in new ones" while getting rid of those old ones.
Because the current customers are "too fratty" for her.
The US Comics industry has been doing this for over a decade, and the result is that they've lost more than 1/2 their existing market, while not bringing any significant numbers of the "customers" they want.
And that's what's happening with Bud Light. They told their existing customers "fuck you, we don't like you, we want those people". Well, those people don't buy bear, and when they do buy bear it's a "craft" beer. So they're not getting those other people.
But their current customers are quite correctly saying "you don't want us? Great, we'll go elsewhere."
And thus sales are down, and will stay down, and SHOULD stay down.
Either you love your current customers, and value and pander to them, or you should go out of business.
Sally327 said...
A-B wasn't seeking to get involved in a social movement, this is just an attempt to rebrand what the corporation was trying to do.
The marketing VP who came up with the Mulvaney campaign stated she was trying to find a way to appeal to younger and female consumers, to get them to buy more Bud Light. She was trying to expand the market for her company's product, to sell more beer. That's all, she wasn't on some grand progressive mission to fix the world.
Tl;dr:
AB is the girl with geeky friends, who wants to hang with the cool kids. So she sucked up to the cool kids / mean girls by mocking her existing friends.
The mean girls still don't like her, and her old friends reject her because of her betrayal
As they should
Thanks, Balfegor. That was some good luck you caught!
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